According to Plan (HIATUS)
by AdFinemAdInfinitum
Summary: It was funny how Rose had gotten herself in the worst position imaginable. And it was funny how she had gotten attached to the worst person imaginable. Or -you know- not funny at all... RW/SM,R
1. The plan goes astray

**A/N: So, I've been dancing around posting this story for a really long time. **

**And, having experienced incessant bullying from certain people, I decided to finally publish. **

**Once again I would like to point out that this is a ****Rose/Scorpius**** fic, with no actual slash. **

**I cannot be sure whether that pleases you or not, but that's the truth. **

**Furthermore I do not own Harry Potter.**

**This story is dedicated to ****jasmineflower27**** for insisting I put this up. **

**Reviews are very welcome especially when you're waiting for your entrance exams' results to come out!**

**Enjoy! **

**ACCORDING TO PLAN**

**Chapter 1: The Plan Goes Astray**

Nineteen year old Rose Weasley took a look at the apartment around her. _Her _apartment. And she was very proud of it, with its bronze-painted walls, its small fireplace and above everything else, the dark-blue couch next to it, where she was currently sitting.

She took another sip from her earl-grey and closed her eyes relaxing to the sound of the burning woods.

It had been some time since she last came to that place. Her incessant work being to blame for that. Not to mention Auror training that had her staying to the Headquarters most of her nights.

All in all that day was a nice change from the exhausting routine she was used to, thanks to some black-haired cousin of hers.

She shook her head quickly trying to dispose thoughts of Albus. Thinking of him would only make her angry and she wished to relax.

But it soon became apparent that it was not meant to be.

The door bell rang in her ears repeatedly. Groaning Rose stood up and put a robe over her pajamas.

"Who is it?" She asked the door in mock excitement.

"Hey Al! It's me Scorpius, can I come in?" The red-haired girl cursed inwards but it was too late for her to pretend no one was in.

She slowly opened the door only to come across the pale, paler than usual, face of a tall, blonde man her age.

She moved back reluctantly, allowing him to come in. The blonde scanned the room with worried grey eyes and finally rested his gaze on her.

"Al?" He asked firmly as if his mouth could not bother to say more.

"He's out. I don't think he'll be back before midnight." She easily replied, having practiced that excuse many times in her mind.

"What are _you_ doing here?" He spat annoyed at her, like it was her fault that Albus was not there.

"I live here too in case you've forgotten." She retorted putting her hands on her hips.

He didn't answer but his mouth formed on 'O' that soon was replaced by the same worried look he had when he first entered the apartment.

He seemed close to either tears or puking. He even shivered every once in a while.

Rose sighed audibly knowing well enough that her manners –and her kindness for that matter- did not allow her to let him leave at such a state.

"Care to sit and grab a cup of tea?" She asked not trying to hide the boredom in her voice. The guy shrugged and sat down on the same couch she was sitting minutes ago.

Rose flied from the living room for a moment and poured another cup of tea for him.

"You don't mind earl-grey, now do you?" She called from the kitchen.

"It's fine." Scorpius assured hurriedly.

"Sugar?" She soon inquired.

"Just a pinch." He mumbled.

"Milk?" She shouted ten seconds later.

"Just bring the sodding thing here Weasley!" He ordered and Rose almost dropped the cup she was holding from shock.

She muttered some well-chosen curse words as she returned to the living room and handed the blonde his tea.

She stood there for a moment observing his troubled and scared eyes. She sighed again knowingly.

"Would you _rather_ have some whiskey?" She muttered as he looked up at her perplexed. He nodded slowly, gaze back to his feet.

"So what's the matter with you?" She asked after serving him and herself a glass of whiskey. She decided tea could wait.

"Wha-?" He seemed genuinely surprised. Like those ten minutes of silence had made him forget she even existed.

"I said what is the matter with you?" She repeated mad to be ignored.

"Nothing." Scorpius Malfoy hurried to reply. She scoffed.

"Yeah, ok, now tell me what is wrong." She discarded his words. He took another brief look at her wondering when exactly she began 'reading' him so easily.

"Wanna me to say it slowly, prepare the ground for explosion or would you rather I just light the fuse?" He said half-seriously half-jokingly. She thought about it for a moment.

"I'm all yours Malfoy, do your damage." She returned his smile.

Once again the blonde was left to wonder how she knew exactly how to retort to his remarks. He shook the thought away returning to his initial point: Spilling his guts out to a stranger.

"It is a very bad idea to say this to you." He began.

"And Al would have been a better choice?" She cocked an eyebrow to that.

"Good point." He agreed, to her surprise.

Because Rose had been perfectly prepared to hear that, _yes_, Albus was a better choice indeed. It kinda annoyed her that all those months of partnership and friendship with her cousin meant nothing to him and that he considered Albus nothing more than a stranger, like her. She stopped for a moment to admire the irony that was apparent only to her.

"So spill." She encouraged.

"I like Al." He blurted out, but Rose saw no fuse being lightened.

"Well, you're gonna be partners for a long, _long_ time so I suppose that is good. Anything else?" She said matter-of-factly causing the blonde to jump up in surprise and blush a little.

"No, well… that's not what I meant." He whispered and it took the redhead some moments to actually process his mumblings.

"I _like_ him." He repeated as Rose blinked a few time.

Scorpius was seriously beginning to fear she was retarded.

"As in being in love with him, you dimwit." He said aggressively and then he fell silent once more, deep into misery.

Rose on the other hand was feeling quite dizzy, all intentions of relaxing flying out of the window. Her cheeks were flashed and her heart was beating in her ears. She was ready to ask him to repeat his statement but then realized she could not bear to hear it a second time, so she just contemplated it in silence.

Then the outburst came.

"You're kidding me right?" She almost shouted at him shock reigning in her voice.

"Nope." He denied curtly.

"But-but-but… I always thought you had …erm… other preferences." She stumbled embarrassed.

"You and I both." He put a hand to support his jaw that seemed very fragile at the moment. Just like his entire, otherwise strong body.

"So how did this happen? Did you fancied him from the beginning? Like fourth year or something?" She asked still unable to conceive that the biggest Casanova Hogwarts had even seen was in fact into men.

"What? No! _No…_ That thought never crossed my mind while I was in Hogwarts. It was all about girls back then. Imagine my surprise when I start having all those feeling for him as soon as Auror training began…." He looked honest when he said that and Rose saw no reason to contradict his words.

And indeed Scorpius had never thought of Potter that way when they were at school. True enough they hadn't been enemies like their parents, but they were never really close either.

All this of course changed when they became partners in Auror training…

"Imagine mine." She muttered.

"It's so weird, I swear it's driving me crazy." Now Scorpius was rocking back and forth on the couch.

"And I don't think it is just a crush either you know." He stopped moving for a second to look exasperated at her and then went on with his rocking.

"What do you mean?" The redhead was beginning to feel sorry for her father's lifelong enemy's son.

"All my life I dated girls because of their looks, cute face, nice legs, hot body… But now with…" He stammered painfully, "…_him _it's different." Rose took a sip from her whiskey. She felt like she needed to be intoxicated to handle this.

"How?" She didn't want to hear it. She was certain it would only make her feel worse, but she couldn't help her curiosity.

"I don't care for his looks. Hair color, face, body…" He shivered a bit at the last part. "But I cannot but stop to listen when he speaks, I am amazed by his ways, his attitude, his sense of humor." He sighed and stood up. He started pacing back and forth in her living room, hurt and strained, like a caged animal.

A caged animal… Rose thought, yeah, he looked like that. Like he wanted something, _freedom_, but he couldn't have it. And that hurt him.

"You've got it bad, man." Rose blurted out without thinking and barely stopped herself from putting a hand on her mouth and widening her eyes. She should _not _have said that.

The blonde interrupted his pacing to stare at her and once again she could feel her heart throbbing.

Then on his face a sweet warm smile appeared that changed his whole demeanor. His gray eyes lightened and looked at her happily.

"Your cousin says that all the time." He said simply. Yes he does… Rose told herself.

"I'm sorry Scorpius but I'm pretty sure Al is still into girls." She said apologetically, as if it was her fault that her cousin was still straight.

"Then again some time ago I would have said the same thing for you." She added on second thought.

"You and I both." He gave the same reply he had some time ago.

"So what now?" She asked unsure, almost timid.

"I don't know! I was planning on telling him today, that's why I came over here. But now I just _can't_. I lost my momentum." He seemed like a little kid who had spent all day playing and was too exhausted to go on.

"Well, Al's not the last guy in the world." She tried a new approach.

"What are you talking about? It's Al I've fallen for, not any guy." His eyes suddenly turned cold with anger and frustration.

"Then I'm afraid it's not gonna happen." Rose stated a bit angry herself by then. She was only trying to help anyway.

"Right." All light vanished from his face at once.

"I should be going." He muttered dejectedly.

With a soft 'thud' he had apparated away. Yet before leaving he had given a word of gratitude only for her ears.

"Albus Severus Potter!" The redhead's angry voice echoed through her empty apartment.

She glared at the Communication Mirror she was holding until a pair of green sleepy eyes appeared in it.

"Rose? What the hell do you want?" He asked sleepily.

"You annoying, egoistical, careless dimwit!" She blurted all the curses she could think of at the moment.

"Wow! Don't shout Rose you're gonna wake Claire up!" He said, looking alarmed out of his bedroom door.

"I don't care about your muggle sweetheart Albus, we're in trouble." She hissed.

"How?" Albus messed his jet black hair uncomfortable.

"Malfoy came over my apartment…" She begun but was cut off.

"You mean _our _apartment." He corrected.

"Well, it is hardly _yours_ since you haven't set a foot on it for like… ever." She argued and he rolled his eyes.

"Fine. So what did he want?" Albus asked already bored.

"You." She replied easily.

"Well, you took care of it right?" Rose felt a pinch of annoyance at his words. Made her feel like the underling of a gangster or something.

"Trust me no one could take care of what he had to say." She stressed each word.

"Do explain." Her cousin encouraged.

"He's in love with you." Rose said clearly so that it wouldn't take him as much time to comprehend as it took her.

Albus choked on… well nothing in particular.

"He…agh… what?" Was all he managed to utter.

"You heard me. Malfoy is in love with you." She repeated just to annoy him.

"But, that cannot be. Malfoy is straight in every possible way… And with _every_ possible girl. We both know that." He added.

"Turns out we've been mistaken." Rose shrugged.

"You sure, he said my name, clearly?" The black-haired boy decided to give it one more try but he soon gave up seeing her eyes rolling.

"So how long now? I mean we've been living in the same dorm so… I'm starting to get scared here." He shivered like Scorpius had some time before.

"No, no… he said he never felt anything for you until you became his Auror training partner." At her words Albus cocked a black eyebrow.

"Since Auror training?" He asked trying to hide a victorious smile.

"Yep." She confirmed.

"And what does he like about me? Did he say?" Albus Potter was never the sharpest pencil in the box. So he thought he could always use some wisdom universe was offering him. When he had hunched he chose to follow them.

And right at that moment Albus Potter had had a hunch.

"I'm telling he came to my doorway like a lost puppy, saying all those stuff about not liking your looks but your character and your attitude." She recited and now Albus was unable to contain his laughter.

"Then I guess he came to the right doorstep." He pointed out and Rose shot him a perplexed look from her mirror.

"Huh?" She asked.

"What you don't get it?" Her cousin seemed shocked at her oblivious ways.

"What is there to 'get'?" She racked her brains to find an explanation but came across none.

"Well, you know… Rose… I _never _went to train with the Aurors." He whispered with a smile.

"_Hello_, my bedroom is filled with cauldrons of Polyjuice Potion and _your hair_, do you think I _don't_ know?" Rose paired her words with a gesture towards the bedroom.

"Precisely. Meaning I've never actually been partners with Scorpius in Auror training. _You_ have." He shot his hands up in the air, but Rose was still in the dark.

"Merlin Rosie, you are slow!" He exclaimed no longer caring about the girl who was sleeping in the next room.

"So what? He is in love with _you._" Rose muttered almost angry with her statement.

Albus wanted to scream to her that, _no_, Scoprius wasn't in love with him. But he decided against it. She would have to figure it out herself. For once Rose had to take care of herself and this was the best opportunity.

At first he had felt guilty for making her take up his job so as to avoid confrontation with the family, but now he saw there were some merits for her too in that business. Even if she couldn't yet see it.

"Just think of what I've told you Rosie and you'll understand. I'm off now." He said and his face disappeared from the mirror.

"Come back you prat! This is all your fault. Hadn't you made me transform into you and take your place in Auror Training none of this would have happened!" She shouted . In vain. He was already gone.

Rose was in big trouble.

**A/N: Confusing? I know. Weird? I know. **

**But I promise you next chapter will be all about explanation. **

**So leave a review. **

**Tell me what you thought about it. **

**I get really, really stressed out when I post a new story so… if you're looking for the perfect moment to give some love, now's the time!**

**Lots of love, **

**Kisses and Hugs, **

**Sarah**


	2. Hatching a plan

**A/N: Seriously a big hug to everyone who reviewed last chapter. **

**I was really stressed that no one would find this interesting, **

**So I'm very happy you enjoyed it. **

**This is a rather boring chapter but it was needed.**

**Two hugs for everyone who reviews!**

**It's all J. K. R.'s . **

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 2: Hatching a plan**

**Four months earlier**

"Are you bloody _kidding_ me?" Rose Weasley shrieked loudly causing many of the customers of the small café to look at her direction.

"Is that a 'no'?" An overly excited Albus Potter was asking with eyes wide open.

"That's a 'hell no'." The redhead retorted curtly, putting down her coffee with a 'thud'.

"Come on Rosie…" The guy clasped his hands together in a pleading gesture and stared at his cousin expectantly.

"No, no, no…" She shook her frizzy head with conviction.

"Why won't you do a favor for your favorite cousin?" Albus tried to talk her into his 'big plan'.

"Because it's against the rules _and_ my ethics." It was quite true. Rose Weasley always went by the book. Her life was moving because of rules. Everything was arranged orderly and coordination prevailed. Emotions were welcome but on no account could they surpass the size of her loyalty to rules, both written and unwritten.

"Still isn't this what you dreamed of?" Albus Potter on the other hand had a more elastic view of justice. Rightfulness, to him, meant giving everyone what he deserves, rather than following empty regulations.

"People don't always get what they want." She said truthfully convinced of her statement.

"But you can! You _so_ can. I'm offering you what you wished for and you're turning it down!" The black-haired, nineteen-year-old man blurted out exasperated.

"What you're offering me is a place I didn't earn. And I can't have that." He sighed at her persistence.

"You _did_ earn it! Your grades were far better than mine. Plus, you did awesomely in the try-out challenges." Albus was not eager to put up with her logic.

"Of course not! I failed Auror try-outs." She narrowed her eyebrows at the memory of her first failure.

"Just cause you couldn't fly. You aced _everything_ else." He continued stubbornly.

"Well, flying is mandatory to become an Auror." His cousin retorted with a well-rehearsed explanation.

"That's a stupid rule." The man put an annoyed hand to support his face.

"But a rule nonetheless."

"So you'd rather go work at some old hag's office, putting stamps on papers all day long." He cocked an eyebrow expectantly.

Rose pinned her blue eyes down, in regret. The truth was that, no, she didn't want to spend all day in an office. If she wished to be honest with herself she'd have to admit that working in the Department of International Magical Cooperation was not her dream. Not at all.

But when you're eighteen and just been rejected from your ideal job because, simply enough, you couldn't fly, then any offer you get is pretty much welcome.

"Fine, no. But what you propose is just absurd!" She crossed her hand sin front of her chest in defense.

"Nope. It's perfect. Look, if you just hear me out-" The frizzy haired girl extended a hand to prevent him from talking.

"I've heard enough." She pretested.

"No, you haven't! Here, listen, first we'll buy this apartment, like we planned to if we both got into Auror training. Then we'll tell our parents that I got in and will attend the lessons while you will start working in the Ministry." He said in one breath.

"In the meantime I will get that job in the muggle restaurant and rent this room the owner's offering me above the shop. You will take some of my hair and make a Poly potion like only you can." The more he spoke the darker her face became.

"So when you transform into me you'll go enroll in the Auror program and start your training. And we'll both be happy." Albus finished triumphantly.

"Actually, no. I'll be in Azkaban and you'll be on vacation. Which, honestly, doesn't sound really fair to me." Rose, who was fuming dangerously by the time he was done, raised both her eyebrows in a threatening manner.

"Correction, I'll be living my dream and –let's just face it- so will you." He pointed a finger at her face. She pushed it away quickly.

"Ok, let's just say, for _argument's _sake, that I agree to this absurdity. Then what?" The girl put a hand to support her chin.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that even if I pretend to be you, I can't keep it up for the end of my life and you cannot hide from your parents forever either. As a result, at some point we'll have to restore balance." She explained as he nodded.

"Well, _then what?_" Rose took a sip from her coffee and waited for her cousin to come up with an answer. He just gaped at her.

"Because, on the one hand _you_ will have to go back to your second year of Auror training without having attended the first and on the other _I_ will have gotten just a glimpse of my dream and will be jobless." She stopped to catch her breath. Her heart was racing as she was at the verge of taking out his eyes with her wand.

"Not really. It doesn't _have_ to be that way. I will use this time to figure out what I really wanna do and you can learn some useful things, practice flying again and re-apply for a position in the Auror Department next year." He replied easily. The redhead opened her mouth to say something that could shut him up, only to realize that, for once in his life, Albus Potter actually had a point.

She closed her mouth and re-opened it a couple of times, mimicking a fish.

The more she thought of it the more it made sense to her.

As Albus had claimed he was bitterly regretting his choice to become an Auror. Furthermore, he had met a cute muggle waitress in a restaurant and was head over heels with her, so he wanted to work there and get to know her.

And, above all that, he just had to clear up his head and decide what _he_ wanted to be for the rest of his life. Family pressure excluded.

She, for her part, wanted nothing but to become an Auror and however much it pained her to admit it, she'd be willing to risk everything for it.

She knew that if she had some more time she could try to fly better. Also, training with the Aurors could help her achieve the best scores in the next year's try-outs.

"Ok…" Rose mumbled uncertain. She scratched her chin thoughtfully.

"Really? I mean you-… I-…" The black-haired guy seemed lost for words.

Instead he leaned forward and trapped her in a bone-crushing hug.

"Rosie, thank you so, so much. You're a life-saver. You won't regret this I promise! Everything will go well from now on." He chirped thrilled but the redhead put a stop to it.

"Wait a second." The moment the words left her mouth her cousin had straightened up.

"We'll have to be extra careful." She hissed motioning for him to sit down.

"Yes."

"And we will report to each other every day." She added.

"Agreed." He confirmed.

"You need to find money to rent that apartment you want over the muggle restaurant. Because everyone will be suspicious if you ask for money now." Rose scratched her chin.

"Already have saved some." Said the black-haired man with a proud grin.

"I will need a lot of your hair, so you had better cut them up till…here." The redhead inspected his medium height black hair and pointed a spot right under his ear.

"But, I like my hair…" He whined.

"Are you _arguing_ with me?" She raised her eyebrows menacingly.

"No way." Albus shook his head in passionate, albeit fake, denial.

"So you cut your hair as soon as possible and you do something with those strikingly green eyes of yours. And come up with a new name. Many wizards go to muggle cafés nowadays." If she had went on instructing he'd have to take out a quill and take notes.

"Oh and in case things get out of hand-"

"They won't!" He assured her.

"_I said_ if things get out of hand, we both turn ourselves in and face punishment." She finished daringly. Albus made a grimace but in the end he agreed unwillingly.

They shook hands formally and paid the waiter.

"Thanks a lot Rosie." Her cousin whispered to her while they walked back home.

"Yeah, yeah, just make sure you clear up your head and make the right decision." She waved his gratefulness away with a move of her hand.

"Promise!" Albus put a hand to his heart dramatically.

"Sweet Merin, I'm dead. Mom will kill me if she finds out. And so will your parents." Rose messed a pack of long red hair in despair.

"That's why they _won't_ find out!"

"I very much doubt it." She shot back.

"Have some faith." He tried to encourage her.

"Have some brains." Smacking her cousin in the arms Rose opened and closed her house's door behind her.

She had a ton of things to do. And all her efforts would probably end up with her being embarrassed, humiliated and unemployed.

But she had given her word to Albus and she couldn't let him down now. Besides she had seen the way his eyes shone when he spoke of that homeless muggle girl who worked in a restaurant and whom he just couldn't help but saving from a bunch of thieves.

Her little cousin was in love and he was desperate.

Just like any Weasley she simply _had_ to risk it all for his sake.

On the other hand she could not even bear to think that she'd have to work in that depressing office in the Ministry for the rest of her life.

Odds were that in the end that was exactly where she'd end (If she managed to escape Azkaban of course) but even if deep down she knew she lacked options, she decided, that night, to live her dream for a while before waking up to reality.

**A/N: So this is it. How everything started. **

**If you have some question (which is normal cause it's all very cofusing) please tell me so. **

**I am pleading: please please please review!**

**Thanks a lot for reading, **

**Kisses, **

**Sarah**


	3. Burrow's game plan

**A/N: RE-UPDATED **

**Cause I accidentally deleted it **

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 3: Burrow's game plan**

"Albus Severus if I survive this I swear I will kill you." A black-haired man of about nineteen whispered darkly at a small, weird-looking mirror.

The man was wearing a black leather jacket, buttoned up to his throat, matching his messy, dark hair. His trousers were baize and they ended up in a pair of brown thick boots, while on his chest a golden 'A' was shining.

"Calm down, calm down, I talked to Dad and neither he, nor Uncle-Ron will be here today." A voice replied in a low tone.

"So, now I only have to convince the entire Auror Department _minus_ our fathers." The young man in the uniform hissed and messed his hair awkwardly.

"Wow, you already look a lot like me, Rose." The voice from the mirror put in encouragingly.

"Shut up, Albus." The person in possession of the other communication mirror nodded solemnly and disappeared with a soft noise.

"Here we go." Said the man under the name Rose Weasley.

The person looked at himself in the now ordinary mirror and sighed.

The girl now looked like a boy.

More than that, she looked exactly like her least favorite –at the moment- cousin, Albus Potter.

Her hair was short and her new pair of green eyes looked far better than her old blue one. She found it a little hard to get used to the new height and certain body parts, but all in all she appeared normal.

With one last look in the mirror Rose Weasley assured herself that, had she not known of the plan, even she wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between her and Albus.

She huffed an incantation and made the mirror dissolve into thin air.

The more she approached the Auror Department the faster her heart was beating. She ignored it, boldly.

Opening an old wooden door, she came upon a crowd of young people. Some were pacing up and down anxiously, others were chatting with each other casually, trying and failing to hide their stress behind cool faces. To say it was working would be rather naïve on one's part.

A brown-haired guy about her age whispered something to a blonde girl, who looked prettier than Rose could ever be, and walked in her direction.

"Albus Potter?" It was more of a statement than a question but Rose decided to nod anyway.

"Nice to finally meet you. I'm Stuart Ollerton." The guy extended a hand which Albus, or rather Rose, shook after a moment's shock.

"Have we met?" Her voice came out lower than she was used to.

"I've heard a lot about you and your family, but it's my first time seeing you up close. I went to Durmstrang." The guy, called Stuart Ollerton, explained, his wide smile never faltering.

Rose's green eyes widened in understanding.

"Oh!" Was all she managed to give back.

"And this is my twin sister Lottie." Another brown-haired person, this time female with extremely long straight hair, appeared from behind Stuart.

She had an identical grin upon her face and an admiring gleam in her eyes.

"Hi!" Lottie giggled childishly and hid a blush behind her palms.

"Lott, be friendlier, it's Albus _Potter _we're talking about here!" Her brother scolded her, much to Rose's discontent.

"Well, I'm hardly that important." Rose recited the reply that instinctively came to her lips, probably from overuse.

"But of course you are! Having grown up in such a family." Stuart put in, getting more and more hyped up by the second.

The redhead, in the currently black hairstyle, nodded dejectedly. There was no way she could persuade those kids she, well actually her cousin, was not really that special. At the same time agreeing with them was the fastest way out of that conversation.

The twins said some more stuff and introduced her to a bunch of other people, whom she barely noticed until they finally diverted their attention from her and back to worrying about the first lesson in Auror training.

She didn't know how long it had been since she last observed her whereabouts. However what she soon came to realize was that when she began looking closely around her again she was not standing next to the door. Instead she was in the far end of the spacious room, just the right amount of feet away from annoying, nervous Auror trainees.

On her right there was a rather short, shabby man -well he looked more like a boy- whose uniform appeared to be too long for his height and too tight for his weight. For that he kept huffing, his face hot from the warmth of the room and the inappropriateness of his attire. The boy had a lost look on his face and in his faded blue eyes fear and excitement flashed from time to time. He was patting his foot on the floor spastically as he was trying to put his wand in his back pocket.

On her left a guy with very different looks was leaning against the cold wall. He had strikingly - annoyingly- blond hair that became darker when they came close to his skin, just enough to match his eyebrows.

His eyelids were concealing his orbs but as far as she remembered, he should still maintain his indifferent silver eyes. He had a peaceful look upon his face, which was once in a while interrupted by a grimace of annoyance.

His uniform looked much more comfortable than hers. He had a light baize shirt under his leather jacket which had no sleeves –as opposed to hers that did and consequently made her really hot- and it fitted him perfectly. At the same time his pants were falling casually all the way down to his black thick boots. Instead hers was full of wrinkles cause a certain runaway cousin forgot to iron it.

Well, atleast_ that _guy she knew. And so did Albus, she reminded herself. After all, she was playing his part. So she forced herself to stop staring at the blonde's skin that showed from his slightly unbuttoned, sleeveless leather jacket and focus on something else.

Soon she realized that her former classmate had no intention of opening his eyes and speaking up to her.

And for that she didn't blame him. During his Hogwarts years he had been bullied and teased numerously, causing him to be very lonely and detached, while Rose, for her part had never shown any interest in backing him up. So it was no surprise that, even if he had noticed her –which she wasn't sure he had- he had not rushed to greet her.

Suddenly a light was turned on inside her head.

If she was _Rose Weasley_ at that moment, then, _yes_, it would not be normal for Scorpius Malfoy to talk to her.

But she wasn't Rose Weasley.

She was Albus Potter. And Albus Potter had been in relatively good terms with the blond. Or so she thought. Well, at least they had been sharing a dorm for seven years. That _should_ count for something.

She made up her mind to make her self known with a cool and brief 'hey'. But then started thinking of the possible consequences of a wrongly put greeting.

For example if Albus used to call Malfoy by his first name and she called him by his last name then the guy might suspect something. Then again if she came out too friendly it could alarm him equally. Of course, the more she thought of it the more it made sense, the worst thing to happen would be him not getting suspicious about her. In that case there was fear of him commencing a conversation about 'old times' making it even easier for her to blow her already thin cover.

Feeling her head getting heavy from the swimming around thoughts she decided to do absolutely nothing.

Turning the other way she prepared herself for another wave of enthusiasm and thinly veiled stress.

"Hello. I'm-" She shivered when she realized she was going to introduce herself, as Rose Weasley. She thought she had been prepared for every kind of crisis. Both her and her cousin had considered all the possible ways to have their identities being exposed. Sadly enough none of them had warned the other to make sure he or she uses the right name during introductions.

As a result Rose almost blew her cover to a shabby looking, presumably immature, freaked out boy who was incompetent enough to order a uniform that was not his size.

"Albus Potter, yeah I know." The boy beat her to it. He was better at introductions than her, she noted.

"Sorry, but do I know you?" Rose questioned. The shabby looking boy gave her a deep, interrogating look. After studying her for some time, he finally shrugged whatever was on his mind off and spoke.

"I was a year older than you, in Gryffindor. My name's Morgan Sykes." Rose nodded, hiding a sigh. At least she hadn't forgotten one of her own classmates.

"Nice to meet you Morgan." She shook a pale hand of short, slightly swollen fingers.

"I'm so excited." The boy, who was in fact her senior, jumped up, his thoughts obviously returning to the highlight of the day, the Auror meeting.

"Aren't _you_ excited?" Under his expectant glance, Rose felt obliged to nod.

"I mean I didn't get to become a trainee last year." He gasped for air, "So now that I finally made it here I feel positively giddy."

"Have you heard that this year Burrow will be our teacher –wait are we supposed to call them 'teachers'?" Morgan Sykes blabbered.

"Well, anyway, it's a pity that Harry Potter won't be training us. I heard that he usually got the first year trainees." The smile fell off the circular face of Morgan Alderton, but only for a moment, before it returned as bright as before, if not brighter.

"Father asked Auror Burrow to take us, because he thinks that as long as a family member is in the class he couldn't avoid being biased." Rose explained, wondering how her dad would feel if she heard her call Uncle-Harry 'father'.

"Oh!" Morgan squealed. "He must be _so_ amazing."

"He's great." Rose agreed from her built, tall, male body.

"And Ron Weasley too. But he always takes third year trainees so…" Rose nodded, her black hair flying around the place.

"Sweet Merlin, we'll all be called inside in five." Morgan stared at him muggle watch unbelievingly.

"I can't wait. Then again I'm so scared! Can you believe it? We're Auror trainees. I wonder who'll be my partner. Oh, how stressful!"

"Sweet Merlin!" He repeated louder and opened his mouth to add something.

A shadow was all Rose managed to see and she would have sworn the momentum of it was so big she felt a gust of wind slapping her face.

She only blinked once before the tall, muscle-y figure of Scorpius Malfoy took over her vision. He was standing very close, but despite her height he didn't seem to notice her. He was towering over a thunderstruck Morgan Alderton who was no longer patting his foot, or moving at all for that matter.

"Would you be so kind as to _shut your trap_?" The blond hissed dangerously. Then he pointed a hand to his forehead and added, "You're giving me a headache."

Morgan bit his lower lip and nodded apologetically. Rose couldn't help but mimic his moves. That Malfoy was really a scary tyrant.

But suddenly reality kicked in. She realized she was now a strong, very talented witch and had no reason whatsoever to obey a snooty, bad-tempered Malfoy like him.

She opened her mouth to say something undoubtedly rude and impressive but she never got to it.

A tall, brown-haired man, dressed in a baize-golden, sleeveless (he had been smart like Malfoy and predicted the September hotness) leather jacket. Only the sleeves were visible from his black shirt and –no doubt- he seemed far more comfortable in that attire than the trainees looked in theirs. Rose guessed he should feel really proud of the silver 'A' on his jacket.

"First year trainees this way." The brown-haired man motioned inside a class-looking room. Most people rushed in there and would have almost stepped all over the newcomer had he not –cleverly enough- moved aside with an understanding, albeit tired, look.

He looked in his late twenties, maybe younger and quite charming in all his mature, attractive greatness, Rose thought. Then, taking in the fact that even Malfoy had entered the classroom, she paced inside, giving the young Auror an apologetic glance in the meantime.

What she came across after she had found a seat at the front of the class was far from what she had expected. Both her uncle and father spoke very excitedly about Auror Burrow. So she hadn't even dreamt of finding such a person sitting in front of her, his right hand supporting his chin and his face reeking of boredom.

Auror Burrow was barely taller than Rose's younger cousin Lucy, who was barely over 5" 2. He was neither skinny nor fat and had a head full of white curls. His mouth was thin and was forming a childish pout. With the hand that he was not supporting his face he was hitting the dark brown desk. He looked like a kid who had just been told Christmas day was postponed.

His deep red, up to the knee, jacket (also sleeveless- she was starting to feel really stupid for not seeing that hot September coming)with the green shirt, the white pants and black boots made him resemble a character right out of a kids' book.

All in all that small man, Auror Burrow, was a bit too comic for his own good.

"They're all here Sir." The 'mature hotness' –as Rose had decided to call the brown-haired Auror standing near the door- said.

Auror Burrow's eyes flashed with eagerness and he jumped off his seat in a moment. He straightened his clothes and his face. Then moved around the desk for a couple of times before standing in front of it with a deadly look, that didn't fit him one bit.

Still all the faces became serious and all eyes stayed on him. Silence covered all the trainees.

The Auror in charge of the first year trainees cleared his voice, preparing the audience for a big announcement equal to his position –but sadly not his height.

He looked up at them and in a cold, low voice, he muttered clear enough for everyone to hear.

"I'm bored."

They remained still and speechless. In all their faces the same question appeared.

_Was he bloody serious?_

Only Malfoy was aimlessly staring at a spot some meters away. Not that Rose was watching him or anything…

"Sir!" Protested the 'mature hotness'.

"Well, I _am_. And I have to be honest about it." The old man scanned the room quickly. And that was when Rose made a very important discovery.

Of all of Burrow's characteristics there was _one _that reminded her of a true Auror, no better yet, a true _hero_.

He had big, deep blue eyes and somehow the young girl was certain those night blue eyes used to be light blue, kind of turquoise, once. It was as if those eyes bore all the pain and suffering and nightmares his body was trying to cover up. As if they grew darker day by day till they became this black-ish shade of blue.

It made her a little sad and a little worried.

"This is a bunch of very _un_interesting trainees." Auror Burrow drawled. And suddenly his blue eyes opened wide in realization.

"Right!" He pointed a finger towards the class.

"Lesson 1." He said clearly. "Be honest to your partners. Because one day you might find yourselves into a bad situation and I promise you, only they will come to save you." Rose swallowed hard at that. It was her first day in Auror training and she was already disobeying the orders she was given.

Honest. How on earth could she do that when she was already hiding her true identity?

She tried to console herself with the fact that gender didn't quite count in that sort of business. Putting that aside she could be perfectly honest to her partner.

"And…" Once again Auror Burrow had everyone gasping with excitement and expectations for no reason.

"That's all for today." Soon he concluded. Several people sighed in defeat and stood up to leave.

"One moment." The Auror in charge of the new trainees interrupted. "I have to announce the teams you'll have for this year." He took his wand and conjured a piece of paper.

"Let's see…" He put on a pair of thin glasses and read out loud.

"Team one, Bertram Aubrey, Ulysses Baddock and Cassiopeia Belby. Team two, Nora Branstone, Kevin Broadmoore and Elinor Capper." A few people began looking around worriedly. Apparently Burrow did not intent to wait for them to sort out the teams before continuing.

"Team three, Belvinia Cauldwell, Chester Derrick and Synthia Fawcett. Team four, Dexter Jenkins, Basil Kirke and Tomas Lufkin. Team five, Andrian McFusty, Scorpius Malfoy and Sebastian Nettles." Rose sighed inwards at that. At least she wasn't going to be paired with Malfoy.

"Team six, Stuart and Charlotte Ollerton with David Muldoon. And team seven, Florence O'Hare, Albus Potter and Morgan Sykes." The Auror finished and let the paper dissolve into thin air. And he was about to do exactly the same when an arrogant voice echoed inside the room.

"Hey! Why do I have to be paired with a Slytherin? And a Malfoy at that!" It was guy Rose recognized from school. His name was McFusty and strangely enough he had been a Ravenclaw.

He had that annoying hatred towards Slytherins that Rose despised so much and he was bold enough to show it.

"Is there a problem?" Burrow raised an eyebrow.

"Of course there is!" McFusty put it testily. "I refuse to have _him,_" At that he pointed in Malfoy's direction. "as my partner. I am certain he would never risk his life to save mine."

"I'm sorry but the members of each team were chosen alphabetically and there won't be any changes." 'Mature hotness' interrupted with the momentum of a person who was capable to handle ten McFusties with his eyes shut.

"Wait a second Alderton. This is indeed interesting." Auror Burrow cut in. The guy standing by the door, whose name was obviously Alderton, nodded in a way that showed he didn't really agree but was used to this kind of reaction from his boss.

"Do explain, Mr McFusty." Burrow encouraged smirking devilishly.

"Well, he is a Slytherin. And Slytherins are supposed to be cunning, selfish and cowards. Let alone evil." Rose rolled her eyes at that.

"I mean, I find it alarming that the Auror Department even allows them to sit the exam. Given the permission of the trainer McFusty went all out, making Rose angrier by the second.

"And you should all be cautious of him! As a Slytherin he would _never _be capable of protecting others." Her classmate's voice rang with certainty and hatred. So much it made her heart beat faster, so much it almost crumbled her resolution to be unbiased, so much it scared the heck out of her.

Could he possibly be right?

Not about Slytherins, no. She knew fully well that it was downright foolish to discriminate about them. But about Scorpius Malfoy she wasn't so sure. She didn't like to admit it, but she, too, thought he would never care about others enough to risk his life for them.

She didn't quite know him, despite the years they had spent in the same class, but to her, he looked cold, uncaring and –frankly- ruthless. To her it seemed more likely for him to become a heartless businessman, like his father, or a high-ranking Ministry official. But an Auror… no way.

"Shit I sound really awful, don't I?" She whispered to herself. She had dozed off for a while and the first thing she heard when she came back to reality was this.

"Honestly accepting Malfoy in here, it feels like we're just waiting for him betray us and join some dark force."

She snapped her head up, a killing glare swimming in her green eyes.

"And what do you suggest McFusty?"

"That because, we, Slytherins, are cunning and selfish we should be put in Azkaban?" She stressed every word dramatically.

"And after that should we make all Gryffindors become Aurors cause they're brave? Should all Ravenclaws join the Wizengamot because they're smart? And should all Hufflepuffs just do some easy job and just 'be friendly'?" Rose was feeling her blood boiling as McFusty paled out and let his mouth hanging open aimlessly.

However Malfoy made no move to assist her. He just looked at them both blankly, as if it was none of his business.

"I-…" McFusty stuttered.

"Cause if that's the case McFusty, then you don't belong here either." She shouted.

"Very good, very good!" A single man began applauding in joy and Rose didn't even have to look to know it was Burrow.

"Finally, you people are being interesting. But I suppose given the current situation the teams must change." Alderton moved forward, a protest hanging from his mouth, but Auror Burrow waved him off.

"Now, now, Alderton, we can't have two teammates that absolutely hate each other now can we?" To that the other Auror didn't reply.

"Let's see. I suppose Mr Malfoy should be placed in another team. But which one?" He looked around carefully.

"Oh! But of course! Mr Potter here, who seems so willing to stand up for him. Yes, I dare say he will be glad to have him in his team." Rose froze in her seat.

"So Mr O'Hare will be joining team five and Mr Malfoy is in team seven with Mr Potter and Mr Sykes. That settles it." He clapped his hands once more and disapparated, leaving Rose to her shock and dismay.

**A/N: So I know not much happened but I really enjoyed writing this. **

**I hope you liked it too. **

**It was a way to introduce the characters and all. **

**Tell me which one you liked more! Press that button and leave a review!**

**Lots of love, **

**Sarah**


	4. A plan to rearrange space

**A/N: Another terribly delayed chapter. **

**Dedicated to all those who understand the meaning of 'not feeling like it' and decided to read this anyway.**

**Because I feel rather apologetic to you, I'd like to say that I've just started college this autumn and last year's incessant studying is making me wanna go out and have some fun. **

**So some of my stories have been hiatus-ed. **

**I cannot promise much but I'm rather into it right now. **

**I'll try to update soon. **

**So leave a review and say hi! **

**Enjoy!**

**C****hapter 4: The best plan to rearrange space **

It was not that Rose had expected a suite with a four poster bed, a private bathtub and a whole living room to herself. Quite the opposite really. She had been rather careful to not expect much of the room she was going to occupy during Auror training.

But _that _was plain ridiculous.

It was a dark, windowless room with three small –rather uncomfortable looking- beds, three tiny desks and three cupboards that Rose was sure would break down as soon as she touched them.

A wooden door led to the bathroom. The door didn't lock. Its handle didn't work either, which could lead to major privacy problems had the bathroom been big enough to allow someone to barge in unexpectedly.

Looking around the place a couple of times Rose picked the bed closer to the door. If the building was going to collapse –which she didn't feel like doubting- she would be able to reach the exit first that way.

She fell on the bed and cringed. How was she supposed to rest on that?

Somehow she was starting to feel her cousin had gotten the better end of that deal. Slowly, making sure Malfoy and Morgan were still waiting for their trunks to arrive she casted a Silencing charm on the room and recovered her Communication Mirror.

"Al?" She called out to get his attention.

Nothing.

"Potter!" The redhead shrieked. Finally the mirror turned blurry. When it had cleared up a smiling face, identical to hers, was resting in it.

"Hey, cous!" The one and only Albus Potter greeted in all his childish delight.

"How did it go?" She asked trying to make herself comfortable in that bed.

The boy's eyes shone.

"Waiting, well it's not an easy job, but at least I get to be close to Claire. Oh, did you know her name was Claire?" He added quickly.

"Claire Bronson. She's incredibly smart and skilled. And she was almost homeless two hours ago. Can you believe it?" Rose refrained from telling him that, looking at herself, she didn't find it hard to believe skilled and clever people ended up in bad situations. Instead she decided to address a more pressing matter.

"Almost homeless two hours ago?" She repeated questioningly.

"Yeah, she was living in a building –well, more like a wreck- that was going to be demolished in a few days." His cousin knew a couple of other building that ought to be demolished but opted to ask something different.

"_Two hours ago_?" She pointed the part of the sentence that troubled her.

"Oh, yes! Remember how I told you I was going to rent the apartment over the coffee shop?" Albus reminded her. She nodded.

"Well, I did and guess who I invited to stay with me?" He said it in the happy tone of a person who either has no problems, or is completely and utterly oblivious to the problems he has.

"You mean you invited a homeless girl, you haven't even spoken to, to live with you?" He agreed with a move of his head.

"Are you _stupid?_" She hissed to the mirror. Her bed creaked under the pressure but she ignored it.

"Wha-? Why?" To her utmost surprise he seemed totally shocked by her outburst.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest, so that he could see them from the mirror and adopted a parent-like look.

"Al, you have no idea what this girl is made of! Have you even asked her why she is homeless? She might be a junkie or a thief. I can't believe you wanted to be an Auror! You have no sense of danger _what-so-ever_." She let some chosen curses leave her mouth as she met with a pair of sparkling green, wide eyes. Then his eyes fell on the floor. Albus whispered something to console himself before daring to face his cousin again. When he did the resolution of a grown man graced his childlike features.

"She's not a thief or a jun- whatever it's called -by the way what does it mean?" His serious expression dissolved for a moment before returning more powerful than ever. "She's a good person. I can tell."

Rose Weasley was not one to trust people easily. She always found something suspicious about them. Some times she thought she was genetically programmed to find flaws in people.

However in that case every normal human being would have been skeptical. Taking in homeless girls without asking any questions was something only Albus Potter would have done.

The rest of the world wouldn't have even considered it.

Just her luck then.

"A _junkie_ is a drug addict. And couldn't you just give her some money, or a hotel room? You just _had_ to let her inside your place!" She cried out, exasperated.

"I wanted us to hang out." That response had her fuming uncontrollably.

"Then ask her out, don't invite her in!" She was getting a sore throat with this, she was sure of it.

"Look, Rose, I know you don't approve of what I do, but I promise I can take care of myself." Albus used a calming voice and apparently it worked cause his cousin relaxed a bit and took some deep breaths.

"Fine, but if you get yourself in danger don't bother calling me. I'll be enjoying my stay in the Auror dorms." She lied shamelessly.

He just laughed whole-heartedly and nodded.

"Talk to you soon, don't forget to drink your 'orange juice'." He said using their code name for poly potion.

"I won't. Don't forget to use your head." She half-smiled and put the mirror in her trunk.

"Deal." With that the person holding the other mirror disappeared just in time.

"Wow!" Morgan Sykes exclaimed, letting his huge trunk fall on the stone floor. He wiped away the sweat from his forehead.

"Wow…" He said again, huffing and puffing. "This looks…" He scratched his chin in search of an appropriate adjective.

"Awful?" Rose, or actually Albus, helped. Morgan didn't hesitate to second that opinion.

"Let me give you a hand." She offered, taking hold of the trunk.

"Oh thanks. It's so great having you as my partner." They both lifted the boy's belongings and placed them in a corner.

"Yeah, you too." She said earnestly. Because having Malfoy as her _only_ partner would have been as defective as that room was dirty.

A loud 'crack' sounded and Rose jumped up from her bed. Opposite to her, a dumbstruck version of Morgan Sykes was sitting –or rather laying- on a pile of sheets and wood sticks.

"Ow!" He rubbed his back side, a pout forming on his mouth as he stared at what used to be his bed.

"Damn it, we can't sleep on these!" Rose groaned loudly and messed her dark hair.

The door cracked open then. No other sound came, though. A fair-featured, shadowy figure walked – no, floated better yet- in with ease. Scorpius Malfoy stood in front of the only spare, solid bed in the room and gave it a good look.

He didn't shout, curse or even show the slightest discontent. Instead he pulled out his wand and pointed it to the bed. Without actually saying anything, he waved it rhythmically and soon his two partners began realizing the _perks _of having Scorpius Malfoy in the team.

His bed was turned into a heavy, wooden one with a cozy mattress and dark blue pillows and sheds. They looked expensive enough.

Next was his desk, which now was bigger and made of oak wood. It had a chair pairing up with it too. Malfoy's pitiful cupboard was exchanged with a huge closet. Not even bothering to look inside the bathroom the blonde muttered some enchantments, which, as Rose guessed, made the room bigger and more comfortable. Slowly she peeked inside it. It had a bathtub and all.

Morgan Sykes slapped his forehead with his hand.

"Agh, I wish I had thought of that! That's awesome." He exclaimed dazed. Soon he was repairing his bed as well. To her utmost regret and shame, the redhead could not help but mimic their moves. She provided herself a bed and a desk, both made of rosewood. She decided she shouldn't risk having a cupboard that anyone could open, so instead she chose to just throw away the old one and keep her school trunk.

She didn't forget to do something about the walls and lights either. She was a girl after all. She liked pretty things.

When she was done she lied on her fluffy sheets and pulled out a book about Auror History. She had just finished the second page when she felt a nudge on her shoulder.

"Hm?" She looked up to meet with Morgan's curious blue eyes.

"Is it a nice book?" Her partner asked.

"Haven't really read much of it yet." Rose replied meaningfully. She hated to be disturbed when reading.

"Oh! I'm sorry to bother you." He understood her point faster than she thought he would. "But it's just that _this _guy," Morgan motioned with his head in Malfoy's direction, "gives me the creeps."

Rose nodded in comprehension after a few minutes of watching him.

The blonde was weighting his wand in his hands, staring at the wall darkly, like a serial killer looking at his next victim. And once in while he would stand up, pace for a few minutes, then freeze on the spot and fall back on his bed.

"Never mind Malfoy, Morgan. He's always been a weirdo, trust me, I should know." She said that loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

And they did. But neither replied.

"You were roommates in Hogwarts right?" The brown-haired Auror trainee pointed out.

"For seven years. And counting." She lied.

"Lucky you..." Morgan mumbled looking over her shoulder at the blonde that had just made it back to his bed and was glaring at his wand.

"Well, forget about him, I'm off for tonight." Rose declared and blew her candle.

Soon she was fast asleep, having first taken a few sips of her 'orange juice'.

The first thing she heard the next morning was incessant pacing.

"Where's my jacket, Oh Merlin, Oh Merlin, I've lost it." And then more pacing.

"What's…" She paused to open her eyes, "…the problem?"

Morgan Sykes gave her a look that spoke volumes. She was late.

"Oh, crap!" Within seconds she was up. After a few minutes of dressing up, during which she was pretending she didn't care to see half-naked male bodies (including her own), Rose was ready to go.

Looking around she noticed everyone else was already in class. She thanked the gods for her good luck and took another sip from her polyjuice potion.

She didn't even bother to show up for breakfast. She was too late for that. Instead she headed to the class that they had been taken to the day before and opened the door as soundlessly as she could. She decided to run for her life and hoped no one would be looking her way. Without taking as much as a look inside she hurried to where her desk was supposed to be.

What she ended up landing on was something very different though.

In all her mad anxiety she had forgotten how Auror Burrow's assistant, the 'mature hotness', used to sit by the door (what an odd habit, really!). As a result she ended up crashing on his back.

"Ack!" She cried rubbing her head and shoulder. It was a good thing that she was a tall guy instead of a small girl. Because had that happen in her real body she would have ended up on the floor full of bruises.

The older Auror turned around and gave her a good look. Even though he had been unexpectedly attacked by an unidentified object from the back he seemed less distressed than her.

"What are you trying to pull?" He hissed. Rose bit her lower lip, unaware that it was a rather girlish thing for a young man to do.

"S-Sorry I'm late." Her cousin's low voice came out apologetic and honest.

"What's your name trainee?" Asked the 'mature hotness' and she cursed herself for ever finding him likeable.

"Albus Potter." She sighed deeply. He didn't seem at all affected after hearing the famous name.

"Well, _Albus Potter_ you might want to know that first year trainees are at room 45 today." That was unexpected. Especially if you considered that Alderton, Auror Burrow's right hand, was still here but at that time it didn't even cross Rose's mind to ask that. Frankly nothing rational was in her thoughts right at that moment.

Things went a little blurry and her heartbeats paced up as she realized what it was that the young Auror was staring at for the past few seconds.

Being a charming woman, Rose Weasley was used to being stared at by men. When it came to young, handsome men she didn't usually protest. And 'mature hotness' was all that his name suggested, so, until she followed his gaze, she hadn't even realized how strange it actually was for a man to stare at another man's chest intently.

The fact, as she was beginning to understand, was that when she burst inside the classroom she had leaned forward, causing the little bottle of poly potion that was hanging from her neck and was hidden under her heavy clothes to come from under her shirt. It was, as a matter of fact, currently sitting there, over her uniform right in front of Auror Alderton. And he was looking at it perplexed, like any normal person would.

Her breath got caught up in her throat.

"Oh!" She exclaimed. "I'd better go then. Thank you."

And she made a run for it.

**A/N: Sorry for the small chapter, it had to be there. **

**Review, review, review!**

**Lots of love**

**Sarah**


	5. Deadly plan

**A/N: Here's another chap… **

**Trying hard to get on your good side!**

**So pleeease leave a review, **

**And of course,**

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 5: ****Deadly plan**

Rose was running for her life.

"Hey! Wait!" She heard 'mature hotness' call after her but knew she had to ignore him.

She went up a flight of stairs and desperately looked around for a room.

A couple of minutes later she found a door with the number 45 written on it with golden paint. Thanking the gods she opened the door loudly.

"Sorry I'm late! My alarm clock appears to be broken." She screamed at Auror Burrow who seemed not quite angry about the intrusion. The old man should have really been bored for he almost thanked Rose, or if you like Albus, for doing something as amusing as oversleeping.

"Well done Mr Potter. Now please go to your team." A couple of trainees gaped at the instructor while some others just sighed knowingly. Rose nodded and headed towards Malfoy and Morgan. The latter, Rose thought, seemed to share Auror Burrow's excitement upon seeing her. He must have really been suffering till then.

"Finally you're here." Her brown-haired partner whispered, standing at the tips of his toes to reach her ear.

"What did I miss?" She whispered back.

"Burrow's been telling us how bored he is today as well. And that guy…" He waved his head in Malfoy's direction. "Just explained to me his 'one and a half meter' rule."

Raising both her eyebrows Rose gave Malfoy a questioning look, which he completely ignored.

"He has personal space issued." Morgan proceeded to explain begrudgingly.

"Figures." She agreed. "If only he had _just_ personal space issues the world would be a better place." That caused Morgan to shine a smile and chuckle under his breath.

Malfoy on the other hand didn't seem equally pleased, for he had indeed heard her comment. The blonde graced her with an indignant grimace that made the left corner of his aristocratic mouth rise upwards in disgust.

"Auror!" The door burst open and a breathless Auror Alderton came inside much like Rose had in that classroom down the stairs. Fortunately he didn't crash on anyone's back though.

"Auror?" Auror Burrow repeated questioningly and Rose, despite her fear of being discovered, thought those people must really like to call out 'Auror' and always hear someone call back 'Auror'. Even they should have been a little conceited about their title. Because the scene, kind of reminded her of those summit meetings, where you would hear politicians go around greeting people.

"Hello Mr President."

"How do you do Mr President?"

"Great and how about you Mr President?"

She tried not to giggle.

"I-I just…" Auror Alderton looked around the room, his eyes resting on her- or rather, Albus. Then 'mature hotness' shook his head.

"It's nothing." He assured and exited the room, dragging his wounded pride behind him.

"Well, that was strange." Burrow muttered and he, too, shook his head.

"As I was saying, you were yesterday assigned into teams, not only concerning your dorms but also as far as training and operations go." The small man with the peculiar attire explained.

"When you become a full-fledged Auror with years of experience you might choose to operate alone but for the moment and the next few years every operation that you will undertake will be as a team." Rose groaned. She could not believe her ears.

Just because she had decided to behave decently, contradicting everyone's opinion –even her own- about that heartless, calculating bastard, Malfoy, she had now ended up with him in her team _forever_!

Why the hell had she stood up for him, when she didn't even believe he would make a good, trustworthy Auror? Why had she gone out of her way for that douche even though he, himself didn't want to be helped?

And what to say about Morgan? He sure was a better folk than the 'Ice Prince' but as far as skill and courage goes he was nowhere close to ideal. If he couldn't even face his own partner –supposing you could call Malfoy that- then how could Rose expect him to face the enemies?

At that moment she felt really mad at herself. Not guilty for lying –like she had been feeling for the past days - or worried. Just mad, because she had done gotten herself into such a huge mess only to end up with a crappy team that wouldn't even make it to second year of training.

However Auror Burrow didn't seem to share her distress.

"Moving on, you should know that each person in the team has his own special role. As soon as you officially announce the position each one will have in the team you cannot change that, unless one of you dies." Burrow's dark blue eyes were shining dangerously.

"The official announcement of each member's position will be in a month from today. During that time you are expected to train with your partners and find out which position fits you." The trainees nodded at that and Rose felt her anger abandoning her. This was becoming rather interesting.

"So now let me explain the positions." He paused and checked everyone's expression.

"We have three people in a team. One is the Striker, the other is the FS, the Flanker Scout and the third is the Guard." Rose stared at the weird-looking man for a couple of seconds. He could not be serious, she assured herself.

Who would ever call themselves flanker _scout_s_? _What were they, seven and selling biscuits for the Girl Scouts? Not to mention that Striker was stolen from muggle football. Obviously. And Guard was just…

"Guard is an awful name." Muttered Morgan from next to her. "Totally unimaginative." She agreed with a soft move of her head.

"True, but I don't know Morgan, if FS was the product of their imagination I think I'll be pretty psyched if I end up as a Guard." They both laughed silently at that and Malfoy grunted from his little dark corner.

"Sorry for disturbing your highness." Rose hissed at him. Malfoy did not reply. Instead he just grunted again and adopted yet another disgusted look.

"He doesn't speak much but always get the message across doesn't he?" Morgan commented, feeling a little braver in front of the blonde when Rose –well Albus- was present.

"Yeah…" She was about to add something insensitive and –hopefully- hurtful about the 'Ice Prince' but Burrow's voice cut her mid-sentence.

"The Striker, as you will find out with more detail tomorrow in you lesson, is the 'fighter' of the team. In other words make sure you assign a Striker who is bloody awesome in duels." They all agreed. The Striker was the one who made the attack moves. Rose noted in an imaginary notebook.

"The Guard is the one who stands in the back and casts the defensive spells. To some of you this might sound like an unimportant position," Auror Burrow shot some killing glares at McFusty and some others who were making 'this is the worst position ever' faces.

"So let's clear this up once and for all, the Guard is probably the most important member of the team. If the Striker is not protected then he will be dead very quickly. Which means -and try to remember this-" He looked at McFusty and his gang again meaningfully, "that if your Guard is down then you stop the duel immediately and return to your base." With that McFusty shut up once and for all.

"Finally the Scout Flanker is the Auror with the most complicated job, as the double name implies." Subconsciously the whole team of trainees leaned forward to hear.

"Before a battle or in a mission undercover they work as a spy. They scout the area to check for targets or abnormal activity. After that they report to their team members and the base. During the battle they duel beside the Striker and in cases of great danger they should be protected by both their teammates and sent back to ask for reinforcements." Suddenly the FSes didn't sound so ridiculous. After hearing their many duties Rose felt kind of embarrassed for laughing about their name. They couldn't help it anyway… poor souls.

Over a couple of hours passed before the trainees were finally able to go to lunch and –more importantly- escape Burrow's incessant talking, which consisted of 5% information and 95% nagging about how boring it was to teach 'fidgety baby squirrels' as he had decided to call them.

Rose wasn't sure which was more offensive, that she had been called 'fidgety' –of all things- or that cute baby squirrels were placed in the same level as McFusty and Malfoy.

"I'll have Nettles be the Guard, since he's such a wuss." Andrian McFusty, easily the most unbearable person in the entire Auror Department, announced to a couple of people who seemed to be teaming behind him. Apparently Burrow's words had been completely overlooked.

"And what position will you have?" A guy Rose had recognized as Basil Kirke from Slytherin asked.

"Striker, of course! Have you seen my Confringo spell?" He boasted and a few seats before Rose huffed irritated over her pork chops.

To her surprise that had caught McFusty's attention.

"Do you have something to say Potter?" The dark-haired guy inquired and Kirke together with Tom Lufkin and Kevin what's-his-name laughed from next to him.

"Not really. I was just wondering how the hell you get here with that head full of-" She was ready to make her father proud and fire some very excruciating insults at the pompous dolt when Morgan Sykes slammed his hand on her back and shouted.

"Now, now Albus don't be like this. We're all friends here." A couple of muffled 'ha's and 'as if's came from Morgan's back but the guy decided to ignore them and even though Rose didn't quite like it she agreed to give up the argument for his sake.

"Why didn't you let me finish him off?" The black-haired Rose muttered to Morgan testily.

"I just… don't like fighting." Her partner mumbled apologetically.

"He bloody well deserved it, though." She countered.

"I know. But the only thing you're going to achieve this way is get yourself into trouble." He had a point there, Rose thought. She might have black hair at the moment but she was a redhead at heart; when she got mad her feelings prevailed and she was perfectly capable of creating a ruckus. Looking back on it, after finishing lunch, she realized she had been fortunate that Morgan had shown up when he did.

And she was almost ready to regret being so rude to the poor, brainless Ravenclaw when aforementioned Ravenclaw that she was beginning to pity walked up to her nonchalantly and stated,

"Look here Potter. I don't care who your dad is. If you keep pestering me you will get into _big_ trouble."

Rose tilted her head to the right and took a better look at him, disbelievingly. Was he seriously threatening her?

"That's a promise." McFusty added and before she even had the chance to come up with an adequate come-back he was gone.

She grunted, feeling her temperature rising. She hated, hated, _hated_ the guy. Maybe Malfoy was the Ice Prince of the team but at least the blonde didn't talk. McFusty on the other hand spoke more than he ought to.

He even had the guts to warn her! Oh the irony…

She had been through way too much to be scared of a little git who did nothing but talk big. Rose was pretending to be another person, a male in fact, in order to be an Auror, even for a little while, so he could not worry her one bit.

"You sure like fighting." A cold, low voice reached her ears as she sat on her bed. She knew who it was before looking up.

"Sorry?" Albus' tone was no less low, she noticed after speaking.

"You've been here for two days and you've already made enemies." Scorpius Malfoy shrugged, showing he couldn't care less.

"Your point being?" She retorted effortlessly.

"I'm glad you catch up fast." He half-smirked. He couldn't be bothered for more.

"My point is that I'm going to be the Striker in this team, whether you like it or not. So if you don't want to make yet another enemy then stay out of my way." Rose sure expected nothing good to come out of a conversation with him. But _that _she didn't foresee.

The blonde had remained silent for almost two days (after yelling at Morgan) and he opened his mouth for the first time to his partner to say that he was going to be the fighter of the group, because –and it was _that _simple- he felt like it.

Not only had he no wish whatsoever to get along with her and Morgan but he also lacked any sort of manners that would have surely prevented him from saying such a thing right to her face.

She had been wrong.

Even McFusty with his nonsensical blabbering was better than _this _one. Malfoy was a heartless and calculating bastard that should have never thought of becoming an Auror in her opinion. He didn't care about anyone. All he wanted –like she had earlier predicted- was to gain fame and be successful.

Furthermore in this case she could not step back and do nothing. Contrary to McFusty Malfoy was in her own team. His actions affected her directly.

"You really are impossible, Malfoy." She was beyond angry at the time. If there actually existed a word to describe his attitude, Rose, in her current state of mind could not think of it.

"I sincerely regret that I spoke up when McFusty wanted you off his team."

"Oh what now? Do you expect me to _pity_ you, Potter? Do you want me to apologize and beg for your forgiveness because you 'stood up for me'?" He said it with such a venomous apathy that Rose felt her body shudder. She never realized what a bad person Malfoy was.

"Believe me I _know_ you didn't mean those words. And I too am sorry that I was put in this team. McFusty is ten times better than you and that dolt, Sykes." His words sting more than she wanted to admit. It was as if he spoke less only to make those few things he said even more painful.

She stood up from her bed, took the mirror that was on the table and rushed outside. She hid in one of the spare rooms and put a silencing charm in it.

"Al!" She screamed.

"Wha-what?" A petrified voice came from inside the communication mirror.

"How could you put up with that _arse _for seven years?" She pressed her hands around the mirror like it was Malfoy's throat.

"Who?" Her cousin seemed more than a little confused.

"Scorpius freaking Malfoy!" She replied.

"Oh!" Realization dawned upon his face. "_That_ arse." Rose nodded frantically.

"Well, he's not so bad…" Albus tried to comfort her.

"He-he… he!" She failed to finish.

"Take it easy cous."

"I will not take it easy! He came and practically _announced_ to me he was going to be the Striker of our team! Can you believe this?" Admittedly Albus Potter could not believe it. Not so much because he deemed Scorpius incapable of such an action but rather because he had no idea what a 'Striker' was or what Rose meant by 'our team'.

Slowly and carefully he asked for explanation which she unwillingly provided him with.

"So he just decided that himself and had _the nerve_ to come and tell me-" She gasped for air.

"I see, I see. I half-expected that, you know." He muttered.

"Expected what?" His cousin gave him a blank stare.

"That Malfoy would be this way." Albus made a grimace remembering his dorm mate's challenging glares.

"He is awfully ambitious; probably because no one showed him any respect when he was younger. He has taken it upon himself to become successful." Rose kind of understood what he meant. In her own way she had felt what it meant to be looked down at because of your parents. But still that did not excuse his behavior.

"He's absolutely dreadful. I don't think he'll ever be able to work with someone." She commented more relaxed.

"Still you need to try and make this work out." Her cousin reminded her.

"But I don't want to. Morgan and I can make a decent team. We don't need him." She stomped her foot on the floor.

"He's got potential though. If he co-operated you'd be even stronger."

"It's not just about strength Al! We have to trust one another with our lives. And frankly I don't think I'll ever trust _him._" Albus really hoped he could say something more to help his cousin like she always helped him. However no matter how hard he pondered about it he could come up with nothing.

She was right.

Malfoy was an egoist and a ruthless one at that. Despite his talent in –well…- almost every subject that required skill, friendliness and compassion did not exist in his vocabulary.

And Albus could in fact _see _the look on Malfoy's face when he heard the word 'teamwork'. That fainted smirk that made one feel ridiculous and the raised eyebrows over the cold gray eyes which showed an ironic amusement at whatever was being said.

Albus Potter feared there was no easy solution for that problem.

"You could kill him…" He ended up suggesting.

**A/N: I think I'll get totally depressed if I don't hear from you this time around… **

**Just saying… **

**So please, please review!**

***begs***

**Stay safe!**

**Sarah**


	6. Not as planned

**A/N: So… I'm very thankful for all your great reviews and like I promised I will be updating more!**

**This chapter is for ****AliceDsfan ****for making just as much sense as needed, for ****LilaW08 ****for her witty comment, ****BluGirl ****for rephrasing (insert winky smiley face) and to everyone who kept reading! **

**I really am thankful!**

**Here's some more Rose/Scorpius action,**

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 6: Not as planned**

One week later Rose realized that she _could_ kill Scorpius Malfoy.

And frankly, for the past three hours, she wanted nothing more than to make those words a reality. That was for sure.

If she had the guts she could certainly grab Malfoy by the throat, like her cousin had suggested, and end his miserable existence.

Instead she chose to glare daggers at the back of his blond head, whispering 'Die, Malfoy, die!' for as long as he practiced his Expelliarmus spell on Morgan. He was good at it too… she noted solemnly. So all in all he could earn the Striker's position with his skills alone. He didn't _have _to go and declare war with her for that.

"Ok your turn Albus." Morgan called at her and she nodded eagerly.

She shot some well-aimed spells at Morgan's wand-holding hand and even though she didn't mention it, trying to be polite and encouraging, Morgan had failed to stop her almost every time.

Practice went on like that for hours, with her and Morgan doing their best to co-operate and Malfoy, firing curses at a fake target.

"Look at him!" She said defeated some time later to Morgan. "It's as if he doesn't even notice he's in a crowded place." And it was true. The blonde was practicing alone, silent and so focused that if one didn't know he'd think the guy was all alone, like…in the whole world.

"He's rather amazing." The short, brown-haired guy who was standing opposite to Rose, leaning forward breathless, with his hands grasping his knees desperately, adopted a thoughtful look.

"He's awful! If people knew what kind of guys want to be Aurors nowadays they'd close this place up." She shot back quickly. Morgan stared at her puzzled. He did not get it. Rose guessed he never would, with that innocent head of his.

Because Morgan Sykes certainly was simple-minded and kind-hearted. If you asked him he'd definitely tell you the whole world was one happy family, Aurors were heroes in the making, McFusty was just a silly kid and Malfoy probably a damsel in distress.

Rose was the one who was faking her identity to sneak into the Auror Headquarters and pursue her dream job under the name and looks of another, risking pretty much her whole life and _yet_ sometimes the only person she felt genuinely worried about was Morgan.

"Oh come one Albus! We should encourage each other. I'm sure everyone here's trying his best." Her partner countered.

That she didn't feel like questioning. They were, indeed, putting up a fight for it, all those guys. The real problem was that the thing that most people were fighting for was not the noble cause that Morgan and the rest of his kin (a.k.a. the simple-minded, kind-hearted citizens) had in mind; but something else, rather selfish.

It was, in both Malfoy and McFusty's case, a vivid wish for success and power. Rose would bet they had just asked themselves one day 'what is the most prestigious and challenging job out there?' and then just gone ahead to do it. Which was not necessarily a bad thing if they decided to devote themselves in it. But they didn't.

Not _really_.

"No!" Suddenly Rose was seeing a clear way ahead of her. "I refuse to encourage these guys!" After seven days of worrying and wondering about what was and wasn't right, the truth presented itself to her.

"I refuse to accept this half-assed behavior that they like to call ambition. Do you hear this Malfoy?" She called after the blonde with that determined voice that echoed around the room and pointed at his direction. Slowly, unwillingly Malfoy diverted his eyes from his target and pinned them inside her green ones.

"Until you come up to me like a man and give me a solid reason why you want to be an Auror, I will not accept you as a member of my team and I will certainly _not_ hand the Striker's position down to you." She shouted at him decisively and watched as his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"We'll see about that Potter." The blonde replied. "Remember you don't make the rules here." Subconsciously they both walked towards each other menacingly. Two tall, strong men one with raven and one with blonde hair, throwing arrows with their eyes.

"It's not about the rules, you arse!" Rose fought back. "This is personal. We can't be partners until we trust each other with our lives."

"Then don't bother waiting. This will never happen." Somehow Malfoy seemed to be able to control himself better. He was not driven by passion but rather by a calculating logic.

"Then quit already." Rose walked the final distance between the two of them and ended up with her –or rather Albus'- nose inches apart from Malfoy's. It looked rather uncomfortable to the people watching the fight but those actually involved in the incident were so engrossed in trying to outwit one another that didn't even notice how close they were.

"I can work just fine without trusting my life to no one. _You _quit." The blonde breathed right into her face.

"This is _my_ bloody dream and I was born to do this." Rose raised her wand and placed it right under Malfoy's chin as she uttered her final sentence with such conviction that nobody dared to question it.

"I will _never_ quit." She stated. And it even shocked her opponent, how serious she was about that. "This is my reason. So let's see who will be the loser."

She didn't really care that the class was not yet over, or that 'mature hotness', who still had a bone to pick with her, was standing right in front of the door when she forcefully opened it, causing him to get a good blow at the back of his head. It made no difference to her that everyone was listening or that a couple of people laughed at her over-dramatic attitude.

Right at that second Rose Weasley, alias Albus Potter, had started war with one of her family's natural enemies, Scorpius Malfoy; and it felt good. It felt like she understood herself better when she was opposing him. Maybe that was why her parents and her parent's parents loved to hate the Malfoys so much. Or maybe it was something to do with their genes. Perhaps that hatred had lasted for so long that it had become a natural thing, like sleeping or breathing.

So she just smiled at herself as she walked away.

Ten minutes later, as she grabbed the communication mirror from under Al's sweatpants inside her trunk, the smile was off her face.

"Al!" Once again she was screaming (rather unbecoming of her) at a piece of glass and a cousin who pointed her to trouble like a compass would point to north.

"Nice to see you too, Al." Her black-haired cousin with his newly acquired haircut and eye color greeted her.

"It's not time to joke around! I'm in trouble." She threw her hands out in despair.

"Well, that's original." He chuckled at what only _he_ saw as funny. "What is it this time?" Albus straightened his face.

"I-I…" She trailed off in an excruciating silence.

"I'm growing old here." Or not quite so…

"I-I… I did it, Al!" Rose finally mumbled.

"Did what?"

"I- what you said last week… about Malfoy… I did it." That got his attention, his eyes got bigger and all color left his face.

"You…you actually did what I said?" She nodded frantically.

"Sweet Merlin Rose, are you out of your mind? I can't believe it!" Albus Potter always had a big mouth. He said lots of things, but like all people who talk big Albus hardly ever meant what he said.

"Neither can I! I'm telling you I lost control." She went on a trance after that.

"He was just standing there and I… couldn't stop myself. I marched towards him and pointed my wand at him and… once I had started I could not stop. I didn't even realize what I was doing until- until it was too late…" She was shaking when she spoke and Albus felt he couldn't stop shivering himself.

"So-so you killed him?" He exclaimed still unable to conceive it.

He watched Rose and it felt like her image had frozen in the mirror. So much that he even began shaking it to see if it was broken.

"Kill him?" He finally saw her lips move into a grimace of curiosity mixed with worry.

"You killed him didn't you?" He repeated with more conviction and she gaped at him.

"What are you talking about?" Rose furrowed her eyebrows.

"Malfoy you… did as I told you and murdered him... right?" His cousin almost choked and coughed herself to death after that.

"Agh… are you out of your mind? Why would I do such a thing?" After more than ten minutes had passed she finally managed to mumble.

"Because… that is what I said…" He shrugged and raised his hands in surrender.

"Sure, but you didn't mean it literally did you now?"

"No, no!" He shook his head spastically.

"Good. Then how could you think that I would do such a hideous thing? It's not like I need a _second_ crime on my back!" Rose reasoned.

"Ok, so what did you do to him exactly?"

"I challenged him back." Albus' whole body loosened up.

"That's all?" He swept the sweat from his forehead. "You _challenged him back_?"

A breath he didn't realize he was holding came out making a sound.

He was not at all worried, despite his cousin's frantic reaction. He wasn't even surprised about that turn of events. Only a little curious.

Not as to how those two had managed to get into a fight on their first week as partners but rather as to why, considering their over-competitive characters, this hadn't happened earlier.

He could only guess that their objectives had been different in the past so they hadn't come across each other. Rose always wanted to be good at everything and at the same time be loved by everyone. Malfoy on the other hand preferred to stay away from… general public and chose to excel only in those few subjects that he, for his own reasons, considered important.

However at that time they hadn't just 'come across' each other; they had bumped on each other, crushed, _collided_…

He half-laughed at a joke that was apparent only to him.

It was as if they had been walking on two parallel lines, right next to each other, for a lifetime and… by some miracle those two lines had met an intersection point.

And then 'bam'.

He laughed again.

"Hey! It's not funny." Rose scolded him.

"Well, who knows… it _might_ be." He ignored her glares.

"Al get real, I'm telling you I'm doomed. I have to do something to take back what I said."

"Why?" His carelessness annoyed her greatly.

"Well, because he's going to sabotage my every move, cause me to make mistakes and get into trouble and in the end force me to quit." She explained.

"Probably…" Albus agreed obediently.

"I already have _one_ problem to deal with," She pointed at her body. "I don't want to have to worry about Malfoy too." She had a valid point to raise, the black-haired man noted.

"Fine then, apologize and take your words back." It sounded extremely embarrassing and humiliating to her but she knew her cousin was right. What other way was there really to fix what she had done?

"You mean to him?" She asked grimacing in pain.

"Yeah! And also… you'll probably have to hand the Swindler's position to him as well." At that she just gave him a weirded out look.

"Swind-… Oh! You mean the _Striker's_ position." Her face lit up in realization and then darkened dangerously. "What? No way!"

"Well, what other way is there to take back your challenge?" She scratched her chin.

"I guess you're right _again_…" She concluded half-heartedly.

This felt wrong.

"So here let's revise our plan." Albus sat up energetically.

"When is your next class with him?" He asked.

"Tomorrow morning. We have spell practice." She replied.

"Good. Then after he is done releasing his anger and frustration at the fake target, go up to him, smile your brightest smile and ask to have a word in private." Albus nodded reassuringly at her.

"Got it."

"Then, when you're alone apologize; 'I didn't really mean what I said the other day.' something like that." It was easier than she had expected, yet no less humiliating.

She grunted. She might as well go to the streets dressed in a plastic bag and high heels.

"If he still refuses to compromise then put the Stroller's position on the table as well." She rolled her eyes. _Striker's_, she corrected inwards.

"Ok."

"Is your problem solved _now_?" Suddenly her cousin seemed impatient about something. Without wanting to she felt interested and all thoughts about Malfoy slowly began leaving her.

"I guess. So…" She took up a teasing look. "What's up with you and… what was it? Oh! _Claire!_" She giggled without quite registering the move.

What she did register however was how Albus' eyes shone, how he smiled and how his face lit up, within seconds.

"_Awesome_!" His chest seemed so full of excitement Rose feared he might explode some time soon.

"Life is awesome!" He whispered like it was some secret.

"_She's_ awesome!" Apparently _he_ was incapable to pronounce any adjective other than 'awesome' at the moment.

"_Do_ try to elaborate." She encouraged.

"Well, she's not the type to talk a lot about herself, but from what I've heard from Mr Belby she's sending all the money she earns to her family that's why she's always broke." Albus said seriously.

"Also, she is very clever and once she let slip that she'd love to be studying in college. So I can only guess that she dropped out to find money. Isn't this awful? To think that there are so many laws and none of them says that someone should help people like her…" Rose nodded discouraged. Albus was, like always, self-righteous. He strongly believed that the rules of the world were made to serve certain purposes and that justice was probably not included in those purposes. As a result he often chose to discard those rules if he believed it right.

Albus, in Rose's mind, was all about justice and not at all about rules.

"In other words you've taken it upon yourself to save the girl?" The happiness faded from his face a bit as he heard those words.

"Save?" He questioned. "I don't know about that yet. I want to. I _wish I could_…" He spoke with some hint of bitterness in his voice.

"But?" The redhead encouraged.

"She won't let me…" He confessed easily. "She doesn't take any money from me even though I assured her I had plenty. She insists on paying half the rent and she almost killed me when I suggested buying her some clothes, since –you know- she barely has two T-shirts and a pair of pants except for her work clothes." It was obvious that the whole situation distressed Albus greatly but to Rose it was sort of good news. If nothing else, then at least it meant that the girl was not pretending just to exploit her little, gullible cousin.

"Look Al, instead of making that girl feel uncomfortable by showering her with money, go to my apartment and pick up as many of my clothes as you want. Give them to her and say I was going to throw them away or something." It seemed like a good idea to her and it sure made the poor guy jump around the place in joy.

"You know I should probably meet your girlfriend some time soon, don't you think?" She laughed whole-heartedly as she said this.

"Don't count on it. If she _ever_ agrees to become my girlfriend I'll go to another country with her and hide her from everyone!" That time they both chuckled.

"I'm glad you're not possessive or anything..." He stuck his tongue out at her and bid her goodbye for the night.

"Good luck with Mr I-will-make-you-quit, tomorrow." She gave him an uncertain glance before nodding and put the mirror back inside her trunk.

Next morning she woke up with everything but a good mood. Her head was hurting, her heart was pounding and as she entered the practice room she thought she might just vomit in front of everyone.

She pretended to practice for a while, almost missing the fake target a few times, until she allowed herself to check her watch. They had almost twenty more minutes of practice before lunch. She forced herself to practice some more and when she realized her nerves would not be able to put up with it any more she looked up to face the one and only _real _target of the day.

He was facing his own fake man-target with that scary, concentrated face that he had almost all the time lately. He was walking around the target in a circle, taking slow side-steps; and with every new step, came a new curse and all of them found the target with extreme precision. Once again Rose realized how big of a fool Malfoy had been when he demanded in such a rude way to get the Striker's position.

Had he not spoken that way to her… had he not _humiliated _her like that Rose would have accepted him as the Striker.

_Hell!_

She would have even handed him the position with a bouquet of flowers or something extravagant like that and none of this would have happened.

None of this would have ever happened…

She shook her head to focus on him again. He was now pacing up, throwing a spell every other second. His deep, gray eyes were shining and some of his blonde hair was wet from effort and stuck messily around his pale face. For a second Rose thought –as if she didn't know any better- that he was some sort of angel fighting with demons or something. A truly heavenly sight to be seen by a plain girl like her.

And somehow, it was to that angelic, pale face, framed by the blonde, wet hair that she found herself smiling a few minutes later. Remembering her cousin's words she raised her hand up and called at him.

"Hey Malfoy!" She saw his eyes missing their target but didn't have the time to register it. "Can we talk for-…" Before finishing her sentence she noticed a ray of blue light heading towards her with such speed that it would have been impossible for her to miss it even if she _knew_ it was coming her way beforehand.

She clearly felt being pushed backwards and at the same time being unable to move any of her limps. A great pain descended from her head to all her body and then everything went dark.

This plan, had obviously gone… not as planned.

**A/N: It is not at all impossible to find errors in this since I just finished it and stupidly updated without double-checking.**

**Still, pleeeeeease write a cute review, even if it just to tell me how I misspelled 'and' to 'nad'. **

**Love you all,**

**Sarah**


	7. Destroyed plans

**A/N: That took a little longer because of my exams that are coming up**

**From now on many things will happen so stay put!**

**I really would love a cute review!**

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 7: ****Destroyed plans**

Rose could swear at that time that her head weighted over a ton. Actually, she would willingly make an Unbreakable on it –do the secret hand-shake and all- had she been able to make her fingers function properly, or simply _move_ for that matter.

Her whole body was aching, in that deep, shallow pain which doesn't make you scream out loud but tortures you slowly. She had already decided to act 'dead' for a little while just to miss evening practice when a little, _tiny_ detail popped up in her head.

She was pretending to be her dear cousin Albus at the moment and she had been unconscious for Merlin knew how long. So there was a high chance she would wake up to a couple of high-ranking Aurors with a one-way ticket to Azkaban only for her eyes.

That speeded up the 'waking up' procedure noticeably. She opened her eyes wide and gasped for air.

"Potter?" A male voice spoke from over her –or hopefully Albus'- head. She turned her head around to face, surely not the last person she'd want to see, but certainly one of those who followed in line close behind Voldemort, Malfoy and McFusty.

"Au-Auror Alderton that… is it… are you..?" She mumbled and realized that even she had a hard time decoding what she had said.

"Yes, it is I." To her great surprise he was able to understand her words. Or perhaps it was that he hadn't been attacked by a dangerous spell lately…

"Where am I?" She blurted out and reached up a hand to mess her black hair.

"St Mungus'." His still blurry face looked kind of worried to her.

"Why not the Infirmary in the Auror Department?" She questioned.

"Is this really the time to make small talk Potter?" Mature hotness sighed defeated at the blank looks he was receiving.

"As we can _both_ tell you bumped your head a little too hard and we didn't feel comfortable to leave you there." The guy replied uncomfortably, like a person who didn't like to expose his feelings to people but hated being dishonest even more.

"Wow!" She exclaimed and once again bells rang in her head.

"My clothes!" She shouted. "Where do you have them? I must get my…" Her voice trailed off as she noticed something twitching in his face.

"I mean…" She wondered if she should rather make up some excuse or just let it pass and act like it never happened.

"Your little bottle, right?" He beat her to it wearing an uncertain look on his face as well. His eyes were pinned on the floor as he handed her a pile of clothes.

Fortunately it didn't take her more than a second to find the polyjuice potion. It was untouched.

She shot him lots of worrisome looks before finally opening it and drinking almost half of it at once. He, complying with her silent request looked away again.

Soon an uneasy silence had spread around them. They failed to look at each other and pretended they had something very important to work with. Rose, on the one hand was fixing her covers and Alderton was searching his pockets for something that apparently was extremely important yet nowhere to be seen.

"You'll be ok soon." The older Auror was the one to quit his meaningless search and break the silence first.

"Oh!" She nodded obediently.

"What happened to me exactly?" She asked after a while.

"You got hit by a rather strong curse, an Impediment hex to be exact."

"Who did it?" Deep down she already knew the answer to it, but asked anyway.

"That Malfoy guy, I'm afraid." Just as Rose had expected it could have been no one else but him. Of course that's what happened to her for trying to apologize to him.

The gods were punishing her for ever thinking about it; just as she had thought Malfoy and her were meant to be enemies.

And to think that he actually had the guts to attempt to kill her! She had certainly not expected that. It was all a little too much for her to understand.

"Are you feeling better now?" Alderton forced her out of her own dreams.

"Yes, I think. I mean I'm all bandaged so I ought to be better right?" She half-laughed at that but the other didn't waver.

"No, I meant with your other… problem." He pointed at the small, half-empty bottle in her lap and Rose gaped at him.

"Wha-wha-what do you mean?" She stuttered like a real expert.

"Well, you know, I've noticed it from last time, when you run away from me in the classroom." Mature hotness shrugged embarrassed.

"You haven't told about this to anyone now have you?" Her heart almost skipped a beat at that. He knew… everything. He was going to expose her, lead her to Azkaban or maybe even finish what Malfoy had started and send her to hell for her sins…

"N-no." She confessed already preparing herself for the impact.

"Of course you haven't. They wouldn't have let you enter the program if you had." He muttered gloomily.

"When did this happen?" He crossed his hands and waited for an answer which she knew she owed him.

"Just a week before I came here." Alderton accepted her reply with a nod.

"So that's why you passed the health tests." Well, Rose hadn't passed those tests herself, the original Albus had before he decided to go bonkers and leave Auror training but it was sort of the same thing for Auror Alderton, she thought.

"You know it is totally against the rules…" He reminded her.

"Yes, Sir. I'm very s-" A hand came very close to her head stopping her from going any further with her apologies.

"Don't apologize to me Potter." He stared at her pointedly. "I don't need someone to explain it to me to understand what it means to risk everything to accomplish your goals." His handsome eyes softened as he looked at her and Rose felt a strange warm feeling wrapping around her.

She had no doubt at the time, he really did understand.

"But I can't ask you to keep this a secret." She muttered.

"Then don't." He shook his head determined. "I don't need to be told anything. Consider this forgotten." He almost winked at her.

"Thank you! I mean…" She felt so overwhelmed by that unexpected turn of events that words failed her. The suddenly she came to her senses, like she always did after being very excited about something. It was like her mind was putting a stop to her happiness on purpose.

"Wait a second Auror." She protested. "There's no way you approve of this kind of thing." She shook her head strongly but the man just smiled.

"I did a little search on my own. In that Quidditch accident you had some weeks ago you didn't just hurt your knee, did you?" His words proved Rose's assumption. All this was a misunderstanding. There was no way a respectful person like Auror Alderton would ever agree to hide her awful secret. He had obviously misinterpreted her words and actions.

"I-I…" She was not sure what to reply to that. Should she keep lying or admit it all and run?

"It's ok. I understand. There was some other injury, right? And because you thought that they would kick you out of Auror training you lied. That's why you're taking this medicine all the time." He recited what seemed to be occupying his mind for a long time. _That_ was the moment Rose realized just how innocent and yet clever the brown-haired Auror before her eyes was. She, herself, could not have come up with a better excuse to save her arse.

"I'm very sorry. It must be painful. If you ever feel like practice is too much for you don't hesitate to tell everyone that I wanted to talk to you about something urgent and slack off a little." He gave her his most charming smile, and _that_ was the moment Rose realized that lying to kind, smart and extremely attractive Aurors was not her thing.

"No!" She called out. "It's not like that." Judging by his calm and kind glance he didn't look like he believed her.

"That's not how things are; so please don't be so nice to me!" She didn't care if she sounded like a little girl, she had to say that.

"I am because it's the right thing to do." He persisted.

"But you don't understand! I'm not that good a person! I lied!"

"Did you lie when you said that you were born to be an Auror?" Auror Alderton looked deep into her eyes, as if he knew all truth lied there.

"No…but-" She replied honestly.

"Then there's nothing more to say about this." He concluded and not so much because the result suited her but rather because his eyes were very wide and cute and blissfully innocent she decided to comply, at least for the time.

"So get some sleep and I'll come by later to take you back to the Headquarters." She nodded and he disapparated.

After that she tried for a while to sleep; rolled around the bed about ten million times and messed her bed sheets so much their own mother wouldn't be able to recognize them- or something like that…

Five hours later, when the Auror returned she had already accepted the fact that she could not sleep with such a guilty conscience. That guy, she was sure, possessed a strange character. When socializing he was strict, professional, _very_ observant and completely devoid of any emotion other than respect and determination. However in a more personal level he could easily be the second most sensitive and kind, oblivious man she knew (the first being Morgan). The moment he realized she was secretly drinking some weird serum, instead of rushing and ratting her out to Burrow, he looked the fact up and instead of spotting, like some ill-intentioned person would have that she, Albus' cousin, had failed the test and would probably want to do something about it, he got worried about that silly accident Albus had some time before. If only he knew that Albus had just a small wound on the knee to remember the incident and absolutely no other injury… Rose wondered how he would react. Would he scream at her, propose a duel… or just look at her with his big, filled with emotions eyes and whisper something hurtful like 'I really trusted you…' at her?

Probably…

"Are you sure you're ok?" The same big eyes that she imagined angry at her send her a worried look. Unwillingly she nodded.

"Ok, then. Want to side-apparate?" He asked obviously uncomfortable. Actually Rose would have loved to apparate next to such an impressive and handsome person but her cousin's words rang in her ears. 'Rose a guy doesn't side-apparate with just anyone. It has to be either a child, an injured person or his girlfriend.' In her head she processed this, mature hotness was definitely not a child, he was not hurt anywhere and –ehem- surely not her cousin's girlfriend.

"I'm ok. I can take care of myself." She tried to sound grumpy and proud and it came out nicer than she would have expected. Alderton rolled his eyes, hid a smirk and disappeared first.

Rose looked around at the familiar corridor. She was back to the Auror Department, safe and sound, still disguised as Albus and just a big, purple-black bruise just over the chest to prove she had actually been in an accident.

Somehow it felt good. She was worried and angry and puzzled at the whole situation and she was seriously considering putting Malfoy in the loony bin but at least she had not been exposed- or died…

Whatever reason Malfoy had for attacking her –if he had any- she would have to face him and clear this up. The guy was no murderer… _probably_. If she spoke calmly to him and offered that long awaited truce, if she apologized or in the worst case forfeited about the Striker's position, surely he would accept some sort of peace deal. Right?

With that thought in mind she was about to make a turn and head to her room.

"I mean honestly Malfoy I did not see that coming." She heard someone speak from very close to her. It was not like the person said something suspicious or anything but Rose would rather not interrupt Malfoy's conversation.

"Why don't you just go die McFusty?" Oh yeah, thought Rose, that was definitely Malfoy. And the fact that McFusty, the same guy who a few days ago had caused such a commotion in order to avoid talking to Malfoy was now initiating a talk made Rose keep her distance.

"Come on Malfoy, don't be that way. I came to congratulate you actually." McFusty's drenched laugh echoed all around the corridor.

"Whatever for?" Rose could actually picture the face the blonde was making at that moment. The bored way his eyebrow would rise and the twitch his mouth was doing when he spat those few words.

"Well, you know… for what you did earlier today." Malfoy didn't reply to that, either because he didn't understand what was being implied or because he understood a little too well.

"I mean you gave that little douche, Potter, a ride for his money!" Rose's eyes opened wide. Suddenly she understood as well. He was talking about _that _incident.

"And what a hit! For a moment I really thought you had off-ed the bastard." McFusty seemed to be enjoying this enormously, to her utmost disdain.

"What are you talking about?" Malfoy finally said. But it was not the kind of question you make because you don't know the answer. To the redhead it sounded like the kind of question you use as a request for the other party to say no more.

"Relax Malfoy no one's here." McFusty assured. "Plus I didn't come to fight with you. I just wanted to say 'good job' for making that idiot pee on his pants." 'That guy' or actually 'that girl' crossed her arms in front of her chest indignantly. There was no way she would ever pee on her pants!

"If you don't want to pick a fight with me don't talk to me." Rose, despite her frustration, rolled her eyes at Malfoy's comment. He really never backed down.

"Ok, ok!" The other guy raised his hands in mock surrender. "But seriously, I am impressed. You gave him a lesson to remember. He'll never dare to talk back at you again."

At that Rose made up her mind to show both McFusty and Malfoy just how capable she was to 'talk back' to the blond even after his ridiculous attempt to scare her. She stepped from her corner and turned in the corridor the two trainees were having their supposedly private talk.

The first thing she saw was McFusty's back, arrogant and insufferable like his character. And behind it Mafloy, standing there nonchalantly, with his black pants falling freely over his boots, his blue shirt slightly unbuttoned and his hair curling artistically at the ends he looked like a model in a photo shoot. Rose sent a deadly glare at the floor just to avoid staring at his silver eyes. His dark blonde eyebrow was still raised, she noted, and more importantly –most shockingly to her- his mouth was forming a satisfied smirk while McFusty spoke again.

"That was really well-planned. That brainless git deserved it." The man that was turning his back at her said cruelly but all she could notice was that victorious smirk which could only mean one thing; Malfoy too was more than happy about his actions that day.

Suddenly she felt less than ready to face the blonde. His little smirk got stuck in her throat and forced her to stop breathing. On their own accord her eyes lost the floor and found his.

He was unprepared for the intrusion. He had looked up and without wanting to had found her in front of him, like a natural obstacle, impossible to overcome. His mocking expression faded in the usual blank look.

He should have gulped in agony, he should have looked away in shame and at least appear apologetic.

Instead, when he saw her staring at him disappointed, he turned his gaze back to McFusty and shrugged.

"Yeah, he did." He agreed.

**A/N: So here we have a very distraught Rose and a very unpredictable reaction from Scorpius… or maybe not.**

**Please tell me what you think about each person's reaction!**

**I'd really love to hear your opinions.**

**Thanks tons for reading and hopefully reviewing. **

**Lots of love,**

**Sarah**


	8. Without a plan

**A/N: Long time no see! **

**So, during my absence I've really done my best to get over my writer's block (it was quite a shock cause it was my first time- like ever!) so be merciful and review?**

**In case you didn't know I don't easily give up on stories and since this story was a request I'll try extra hard to finish it!**

**Enjoy!**

**According to plan 8: Without a plan**

At least he wasn't smirking anymore. Rose could swear that if he had –on top of everything else- been smirking as well she would have launched and hexed him to next century. Fortunately he was just wearing a blank face … while admitting to having attempted to off her once and for all. The stoicism (to put it delicately) of that guy was out of this world, indeed.

She bit her lower lip and tried to keep at bay the frustrated tears that she had been saving up for the situation. Deep down she knew she could not have her dear, manly cousin cry in front of two of the biggest prats of the Auror Department, if she wanted to survive the training.

She took a step back and hid in her corner like a little kid who's avoiding the school bully. McFusty spoke some more nonsense but she wasn't even listening anymore. She had to clear her head to see exactly what was going on before making another stupid move that would land her somewhere further than St Mungus' , like, say, hell…

"Al, are you ok now? Merlin it was terrible, I almost got a heart attack when I saw you on the floor!" A pale Morgan welcomed her in the dorm with a cup of hot tea ready for her –or rather her cousin- and a pair of pajamas already lying on her bed.

Upon seeing her inquisitive look the brown haired guy hurried to explain, "I prepared everything for you. You can lie down if you like." He patted her mattress in what he thought an inviting way.

Rose sighed and fell on the bed heavily.

"You said everyone in this place is trying their best." She began in a low tone, "that we should encourage them…" At that she looked up at her partner with a pissed off look upon her face, like someone had just asked her to stand up and throw a party in the middle of some natural disaster.

"I understand that you're kind of irritated Al, that's why you should relax, get a good night's sleep and refrain from-" He could not have found a worse time to speak about forgiveness and calmness. Because seconds after he opened his mouth the door opened as well, letting the reason that Rose was 'kind of irritated' into the room. Said reason looked apathetic as ever, or even a little amused at the whole situation.

He looked over at Rose who was in the middle of wearing her pajama bottoms and glaring at Morgan when she had decided to take a sip from her tea and thus looked quite tangled up. He raised his eyebrows, chuckled dryly and headed to his bed.

In the process Rose had stood up and had her pants not been half-on, causing her to stumble and fall back on the bed, she would have punched the light out of the blonde.

That kind of made Morgan understand how she was _not_ 'kind of irritated'. She was flat out infuriated. Biggest proof of this is that when, the next morning, Stuart Ollerton blatantly pointed out that there was something wrong with her face Morgan wisely announced:

"Ah, you mean that?" He pointed at her, "That's her coming-up-with-ways-to-kill-Malfoy face!" Despite the morbid turn the conversation had just taken the brown-haired boy had the courage to laugh and pat Ollerton at the back, pushing him away –for his own safety- in the process.

A couple of other people who showed some genuine concern for her cousin's health also came and went to same way until a grim looking Mature Hotness appeared out of nowhere with Malfoy right behind him and asked her to follow him to Burrow's office. She nodded and followed solemnly, stopping herself from looking at the blonde a couple of time to avoid further 'accidents'.

She had by that time sorted out her mind. And despite the fact that Morgan was proclaiming her murderous intentions towards the Ice Prince she had already, after a good night's sleep disposed of them, just like her shabby friend had predicted. She was still mad about Malfoy's attitude, that was for sure, but there was another fact that she could not ignore…

"Please come in Mr Potter, Mr Malfoy." A man about a hundred years old, with a small white moustache, tanned skin and a pitch black cloak with a golden 'W' on his chest was sitting right next to Burrow making a great contrast with his colorful outfit.

"This is Cornelius Flume, a friend of mine who is a counselor in the Wizengamot. He's here to discuss the incident between you two." Said Burrow, looking not a bit more serious than he usually was.

"I have already been informed… of the events occurring yesterday, October… 12th by Auror Burrow. So there's no need for you to explain." Cornelius Flume spoke with pauses taking his time to adjust his glasses and look at his papers.

"It seems that Mr Malfoy-" His eyes wandered off between her and the blonde for a couple of seconds before resting on the blonde. "-was witnessed attacking Mr Potter here-" He looked at Rose and nodded to himself. "In front of everyone, with a very powerful spell." His eyebrows furrowed menacingly, or so Rose thought.

Malfoy was in deep trouble. If the old man was not as strict as he looked there was a slight chance that he'd manage to avoid being kicked out of training. All in all it was up to him to make the call. Rose had nothing to do with it anymore; which was, no doubt, a good thing. She wouldn't like to carry it in her conscience that Malfoy got disqualified because of her, despite his hideous attitude.

"Well, there's no way for us to be sure exactly what happened." Admitted Cornelius Flume in a more mild tone.

"Apparently the rivalry between Mr Potter and Mr Malfoy goes back to-" For some reason or another he had to check his notebook even for that sort of information. "-the first time they met." Actually that was quite wrong, noted Rose inwards. Because she knew Malfoy since she was 11 but she had never bother to cast him a second look for seven years, let alone start a deadly rivalry with him…

"So one could assume that Mr Potter did something to agitate his partner." Now that was pure speculation, thought Rose, she was in fact planning on proposing a truce to the dolt when he hexed her head off her shoulders!

"Or perhaps Mr Malfoy saw this as an opportunity –since his partner was unarmed- to demonstrate his power." Burrow who was by that time drawing dragons on his papers (in a failed attempt to imitate his friend's professionalism) looked up at Malfoy in a fake shocked face.

"How… _primitive_ of him!" He exclaimed theatrically and chuckled, but soon after that he was forced to go back to his drawings by a deadly glare.

"Then again we could always assume that Mr Malfoy was hallucinating at the time and thus is mentally unstable." This time it was not only Burrow who laughed. Rose put a hand over her mouth to restrain herself while Malfoy sighed just a little irritated.

"Of course the possibility of it being an accident has not crossed your mind." The Ice Prince muttered darkly, giving the floor a very nasty look. Flume raised an interested eyebrow.

"Well of course that is not up for me to say." Blurted Flume making Rose choke on her saliva.

In the end she was the one to decide wasn't she?

As if trying to reply to her the counselor said: "What do you think Mr Potter?"

She took a deep breath in and looked at Malfoy. He was avoiding her eyes, or maybe he was just not at all interested to see what she was thinking… Either way there was no chance for her to make up her mind according to his reaction.

"You do understand of course that Mr Malfoy's future is in your hands right now, don't you? So make sure you're honest." Reminded Flume, in an obvious attempt to drive her completely nuts; or so it appeared to her.

Once again Burrow laughed.

"Hm." He said. "This always seems to be the case with Malfoy and Potter." That momentarily got Flume's attention. He asked for explanation which Burrow hurried to provide. He referred to how Rose's words caused the team changes that occurred the first days of training.

"So, you see, it appears that Mr Malfoy's future is permanently lying in his hands." The Auror commented.

"And it seems to me that Mr Potter is taking good care of it too." While speaking Burrow sneaked a look at the two Auror trainees. As Rose noticed his satisfied grin two things crossed her thought. First that Auror Burrow was not half as stupid as he seemed and secondly that he very much liked to distress people with his words and would probably stay late in his office thinking about it and laughing while drawing dragons.

"So what will it be Mr Potter? Accident or no accident?" Flume returned to the previous conversation sternly, like a person who felt that he had just wasted his time listening to something useless.

Rose, we should point out, was one these people who didn't like to be told what to do. Also, she didn't like being framed as a soft and senseless person, especially when it came to Malfoy. So, in a way, even though her words cannot be excused, they can easily be attributed to her stubborn and proud nature.

"I'm sorry Counselor but I cannot be sure. All I know is that I just came into the room and got hit by a very strong curse. However," She decided to go on and say it before her throat was completely dry.

"However," She repeated. "I am positive that Malfoy saw me very clearly and thus could not have mistaken me for a practice target." In other words she was not one to point any fingers but all the same he had done it on purpose….

She saw Malfoy's gray eyes opening wide and giving her a disbelieving look, not even a glare, before muttering some curses under his breath. Still, just like she had expected, the blonde did nothing to defend himself.

"So not an accident." Concluded Flume.

"I cannot be sure," She repeated her previous statement. "But seeing as I almost lost my life I would like to see you take some sort of action." Again the blonde gaped at her in a 'you're kidding, right?' way.

"Very well." The counselor agreed and turned to Burrow.

"I don't think this case should be taken to court Burrow. You chose the punishment." He shrugged giving up every responsibility.

"Oh, how sweet!" Burrow jumped up so suddenly that he caused an actual gust of wind that swept his papers (with the dragons) and placed them on the floor.

"Well," He sat back down. "I'd say a week's suspension, which will be taken as an absence from your duties and will count in the final assessment. Also, you are to stay at the Department during the next two weekends that you have free and _a warning_: Next time you as much as sneeze in Potter's direction you _will _be disqualified." Rose stared surprised at Burrow. She was not expecting such a harsh punishment from him of all people. She was certain he'd say something like 'I'm bored now, go away and be nice'. Instead he gave very precise and strict orders to Alderton before sending them all away – went as far as asking Mature Hotness to 'keep an eye on them at all times'.

When they were back at their dorm Rose noticed that practice was not over for the others yet, meaning that she had about half an hour to do her favorite pastime, sit in her dorm with an Ice Prince that looked more like a demon taken straight from the fires of hell.

"I see you didn't bother standing up for me _this time_. Seems like you learnt your lesson." He said through gritted teeth. Rose looked up from the book she was pretending to read for the past ten minutes.

"What do you mean?" She said.

"I mean that I'm glad you're no longer dreaming to trust me with your life or anything else equally ridiculous." He laughed a laugh that could only be described as evil.

"Actually you are wrong." She rose to her feet and stared right into his gray eyes with her green ones. "I've told you already, I have a damn good reason to be here and I won't do anything that would pull me off my course, like, for instance, becoming your little pet." She smirked at his shocked face.

"So you might as well put all the cards on the table and tell me your reason for being here."

"For the money and the power." He replied simply.

"Ha!" She laughed knowingly. "As if!" he gave her a weirded-out look. He honestly did not expect her to question these motives.

"I guess Morgan was right." She commented remembering the way Morgan treated the blonde. "Malfoy you, in fact, are just a damsel in distress." It was not a joke or a not-so-well-thought-out insult. To Rose that was the undeniable truth.

"_What?_" Said Scorpius incredulously.

"A damsel in distress, that's right." She repeated. "You're that poor unprotected girl who is wronged by everyone for something she didn't do and instead of defending yourself you just stand there listening to people accusing you of Merlin knows what, thinking that it's ok to be treated like that because one day, out of the blue your prince will come to save you and someday you'll be royal and all." Silence took over for a moment before she went on.

"Well, I am truly sorry Malfoy but I won't be your prince charming, getting you out of trouble every other day. And if you don't man up and fight for yourself you'll never get what you want. Acting like you don't care and like you're above everyone won't work on me. If you want to be an Auror, better start trusting me a bit. If you want to be the Striker show me what you've got and if you want to get yourself out of this mess tell them I lied. " She finished her speech with a victorious grin which made Malfoy even more unnerved than he was before.

"You mean to say you knew it was an accident?" He asked loudly.

"Merlin , Malfoy, it was plain obvious! You had said the curse before you saw me and you just turned around suddenly." She rolled her eyes at how obvious it was.

"So you bloody lied!" He insisted.

"So?" She shrugged indifferently. "Go tell them the truth, if you like." He looked away abruptly trying and failing to hide a hurt expression that was plastered all over his face.

"And you think they'll believe me? Have you by any chance forgotten what my last name is?" He spoke in a bitter tone of a person who knows what he's talking about very well.

"Spare me with your damsel in distress talk! I couldn't care less about your last name and neither could Burrow. Isn't that just an excuse in order to step back and do nothing?"

He searched Albus' face for a moment for signs of untruthfulness but found none.

"So you're challenging me to go tell on you?" He asked.

"Obviously." She agreed.

Frankly Malfoy didn't know what had gotten into him.

Maybe it was his overly ambitious nature, maybe the fact that someone as lowly as Potter had spat to his face that he had lied and caused him to almost get disqualified, or maybe that he had been called a damsel in distress one too many times. Regardless of the reason though his heart was racing and at that time he wanted nothing more than to make Potter eat his words.

"And if I get my point across then we'll fight it fair and square?" He concluded.

"If you want to race with me you'll have to catch up first." She grinned in sincere joy at the thought.

"Fine." He declared and at that moment Morgan barged in with a terrified look on his face.

"You didn't kill each other right?" He cried out. Both of them took a look at him and smirked devilishly.

"Not yet." They said in one voice.

**A/N: Things are heating up in case you didn't notice!**

**For those of you who know what 'yaoi' means I should say that the next few chapters will be like yaoi paradise (not too much, you know just brushing the surface)! **

**Please, please, please review!**

**Begging here!**

**Lots of love and candies,**

**Sarah**


	9. Save is the plan

**A/N: Frankly I am a despicable person. Since I started working on non-fanfiction stories I have been so confused with different plots that I barely update. **

**Sorry! I've been going through old reviews and this somehow encouraged me to keep this up! **

**A big hug to all of you who read and review this story! **

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 9: Save is the plan**

"Sweet Merlin, and I thought my life was interesting!" Her black-haired, green eyed replica (or was _she_ his replica?) laughed in the Communication Mirror. Rose, pushed her lips together and nodded solemnly.

"So he actually accepted the challenge?" Her cousin asked for what should have been the tenth time within an hour.

"Yeah." She muttered slowly and somewhat reluctantly.

"And then? Then… then… then what?" Albus was sitting at the verge of his seat with eyes wide open and shocked.

"Then I said ok." She replied icily.

"Rose, are you stupid?" His demeanor changed instantly. He fell back on his seat and pouted. "Why on earth would you provoke him after all that has happened?"

"Because, like it or not, he's my partner and I can't have him be an utter prick for one minute longer." The redhead repeated quickly the well-rehearsed answer.

"So what if you get disqualified? Did you forget my plans could fall apart as well?" Frankly Rose hadn't considered that if she were to be kicked out of Auror training Albus would be the one who'd be lambasted. Not to mention that he'd have to drop his job (and of course his cute, poverty-stricken girlfriend) and go back home.

And all that because of her.

Suddenly she felt pretty distressed.

"I-I won't get disqualified… There's no way!" She breathed out. She was more worried about persuading herself than him at that point.

"Why not? Do you reckon he won't manage to prove it?"

"Well, of course he can't! Besides, I'm the one who got attacked, how can they blame me?" It was a dumb question. The kind of question that would probably only work on an elementary student. Any mature person could figure out pretty easily that if someone has lied to get someone else in very big trouble then that someone would probably be blamed for it. So they _could_ disqualify her, someone more rigorous when it comes to justice might even say 'should'!

"Rose… I understand that Malfoy is a cold-hearted little devil who almost sent you to next century and back but please, _please_ try to not get in more trouble with him!" Her cousin was right, it was not the time for stupid rivalries and fights. Not when she was 'dressed up' (for lack of a better word) as her cousin, breaking a dozen of rules in the process.

Suddenly that strange passion which caused Rose to always challenge the blonde seemed childish and idiotic, like it always did when she talked about it with Al. And yet that passion, that blind, immature wish to 'beat him' grew inside of her, feeding on her logic.

For the time being opposing forces were fighting in her head. 'Be sensible, go tell Malfoy you were just joking the other day,' said the one. 'Don't give up! Fight it off with him, make him respect you,' argued the other. If she were in one of those old cartoons for children there would probably be a little angel sitting on her left shoulder and a miniature demon on her right.

"Look Al," She took a deep breath and prayed to Merlin she was making the right decision. "Competing with Malfoy, in this situation, is a given. However," she didn't dare to look up at him, "_however_, I promise you it is for the best. I'll make sure I don't get kicked out, you can bet on that, but the challenge is on."

Had she had the courage to face him she would have seen how her cousin's green eyes became wide from surprise. And then, as if he finally understood something very important, he turned his gaze away from the mirror as well and smiled a crooked, knowing smile. His eyes were no longer worried; they were sparking with excitement, unreasonable burning passion, mirroring Rose's feelings.

"I guess it cannot be helped." He laughed heartily. Rose eyed him perplexed.

"You know…" He began explaining, "since his future lies where you are it is only natural…" He hesitated, with good reason, "that your future is in his hands as well, right?"

She furrowed her eyebrows thoughtfully. Burrow had said the same thing; that Malfoy's future was in her hands, or something in those lines. And now Al was suggesting her future…

It hardly made any sense.

Sure she was in a duel to death with the blonde, inevitably, but what did the future had to do with it? In the end of the first half of the year she would leave training for Albus to take over and start preparing for next year's trials. In the end she would probably never see Malfoy –let alone co-operate with him- ever again. He, of course, would think that nothing changed after the six months ended but, under his nose, Rose would have escaped. Which, as a matter of fact would not be so bad for him either. Albus (the real one) with his good sense would make the blonde's life considerably easier. The end.

That was the plan.

And after that, the future. With no Malfoy in it.

"Pff…" She put a hand over her mouth to stop her chuckles. "You and Burrow… you sure are such drama queens!" She fell back on her bed and laughed some more to her heart's content.

"Don't worry about Malfoy, ok?" She brushed off the topic with a movement of her hand.

"Now tell me, how's…_Claire_!" She blurted the name with some extra pride for having managed to remember it.

"Oh!" His eyes shone. "I gave her some of your clothes, great idea by the way, and she totally loved them and will always wear them in dates and stuff." Rose raised an eyebrow.

"Did she say all that?" She asked slowly.

"Well, not with so many words, but she told me to say thanks to you." The redhead nodded in comprehension. She had never met that girl, Claire, in her life yet in order for her to have managed to survive all alone in the world she had to be a very serious and proud person.

"Ok, tell her I said it's no big deal and to make sure to go on some dates in them instead of me." Rose sighed at the thought.

She was surrounded by young, talented, smart, toned guys twenty four/seven and hadn't been on a date for a million years. Plus, nowadays when a guy was trying to compliment her he would probably say something like 'Wow your aim is so accurate.' or 'Your muscles are so big. Is that a six-pack?' and to think that once guys were admiring her long red hair and her blue eyes...

It was obviously the punishment she was getting for lying to everyone.

"I've got to go back to the dorm now, it's getting really late and I've got practice tomorrow morning." She said letting a yawn escape her lips.

He bid her goodnight as his image was beginning to fade out and soon she was walking back to the dorm wondering what on earth Malfoy was planning to do in order to surpass her.

Somehow she could not stop thinking about him. Finding his attitude frustrating was, frankly, only one part of the problem. Lately, she had been questioning not only his motives but his character altogether- at least the character that he showed to her. At times, she wished she were able to crawl, secretly inside his obnoxiously big head and see things for herself instead of believing everything he said.

Next day in training her curiosity was just a little satisfied.

She had been sitting quietly next to Morgan who was trying to find out how many ways there were to make someone pass out using magic.

"I'm sure if 'fainting fancies' can be considered a safe option too, although not properly tested…" He pondered and Rose mechanically nodded a couple of times before noticing a gloomy-looking (more than usual that is) blonde pacing in her direction.

"I talked to Burrow." He announced as soon as he was close enough to be heard by her and not necessarily by the rest of the people in the room. Rose looked at him expectantly.

"He says he believes me but cannot take back my punishment unless you explain how it all happened." He didn't make any demands after that and his face indicated that he never really expected her to go and tell the truth for his sake. Yet, he must have hoped, somewhere deep inside that she would, seeing as he bothered to let her know of it.

"Don't think that I'm telling you this to make you go and talk to him on my behalf…" He answered as if he had read her mind. But then, the question was why would he bother to come and tell her if he didn't think she'd help him?

She was just about to ask exactly that when he beat her to it again.

"I just wanted you to know that I will solve my own problems from now on and I am most definitely _not _a damsel in distress." She, or rather _he_, (she was a 'he' after all) suppressed a laugh. Malfoy's pale face was somehow different, the effect anger had on it, she suspected. His eyebrows awfully furrowed over his steely eyes and his lips pushed together.

She decided she liked it better than his usual apathetic look.

"We'll see about that." She smirked and right on cue 'Mature Hotness' and Burrow entered with half a dozen more Aurors behind them.

They all looked very serious and professional and Rose's thoughts were suddenly interrupted.

"Well, little squirrels, fun time's over. Time to get a little serious." Truthfully she failed to see how incessant practice and studying could qualify as 'fun time' but she decided against asking and just focused on Burrow.

"Today, practice will take place on real-life conditions." This time more than one trainees raised a hand to ask but were easily ignored.

"The trial starts when you enter your portkey-" He pointed at seven small objects on his desk. "and ends when you return to this room, using the same portkey." He paused and took something from his desk, which he began chewing shortly afterwards.

"If you apparate or fly or walk back here you're disqualified. If you fail to return also disqualified. If you return without what you left to get-" He paused again for the effect, "_again disqualified_."

"What happens if we get disqualified?" Someone managed to ask.

"You fail the trial and get fifty extra hours of practicing as a penalty. However if you finish first you get an Excellent score which amounts for half the grade." Auror Alderton explained instead of Burrow who was too busy eating to talk.

"Of 'ourse when we say 'you' we 'ean the 'hole team. " The Head Auror said in a muffled manner while some green liquid was running from his mouth.

"Certainly, like Auror Burrow said, each person must operate together with his teammates and without the help of anyone else. These Aurors will be supervising you, so if anyone does not follow these rules-"

"Will ee disquaaalidieeed." Burrow screeched creepily and it was at that time that Rose fully registered the fact that old was leaning against his office, kicking his one foot with the other with his clothes covered in the same green liquid that was running from his mouth a minute ago.

"What is wrong with him?" She exclaimed watching as Burrow started laughing like a madman and trying to break the desk with his head.

"Hysteria. " Malfoy muttered from next to her, dazed enough to not notice who he was talking to. "He poisoned himself on purpose."

"Don't tell me…all this time…" Morgan's eyes were at the size of saucepans as he spoke.

"You mean he's been eating 'alihotsy' all this time?" Rose finished his sentence.

"Alihotsy huh?" McFusty's voice came triumphant from somewhere behind them. "Thanks a lot, losers."

"As some of you might have realized, Auror Burrow has been poisoned. We did this to make the mission more realistic. Your aim is to go where the portkey takes you and bring back the antidote to the poison before it's too late. That is… within two hours."

The moment Alderton had finished his sentence McFusty grabbed his two teammates by the collar and dragged them towards an old radio which one of them took and the three of them transported.

"Idiots." Malfoy glared at his own teammates and motioned for them to hurry up. He was already standing next to the desk eyeing a book with no name on its cover impatiently.

Rose run there while passing inches from a now screaming Burrow who needed two plus Alderton people to hold him back. Morgan, followed suit. He took Rose's arm, which was in fact Albus' arm and then waited for her to awkwardly grab Malfoy's shirt.

When they were all connected –for lack of a better word-, Malfoy took the book and in the blink of an eye they were all in an entirely different place.

"Is this the Forbidden Forest?" The blonde asked inspecting the place.

It was definitely a forest, Rose observed, but the trees were not as old and the bushes not as thick. The atmosphere was clearer compared to the always foggy and humid one in the Forbidden Forest.

"No." She replied. "Probably a forest close to Godric's Hollow, but that's not the point."

The two men nodded as more people arrived.

"We need to find 'glumbumbles'." Morgan said what everyone was thinking.

"But with so many people they'll all hide underground and there's no way to catch them then." The brown-haired guy continued as their faces darkened.

"That's why we have to hurry." Malfoy muttered and went off without waiting for a reply.

The two others followed him whispering behind his back about how they should extract the fluid of the 'glumbumbles' and whether it was ethical to steal some from another team if needed.

"Stealing was not in the rules…" Morgan mumbled and as Rose was about to explain that certain rules applied in all situations without being said she saw a small familiar plant.

"Malfoy!" She screeched while pulling Morgan with her.

"What?" He shouted next to her ear a few moments later.

"Look!" She pointed at the small plant in triumph. "Nettles!" She looked back and forth between the two expectantly.

Then, something shone in both their eyes.

"Glumbumbles love nettles, right?" She finished her thinking and even Malfoy almost smiled – or maybe it was the dim light…

They spent the next half hour waiting for small insects to come forth looking for food but nothing happened.

"We're idiots." Malfoy repeated his statement from earlier that day. "There are possibly thousands of nettle plants in this forest, why would glumbumbles come to this particular one?"

He was right, Rose hated to admit.

"Perhaps we sh-" She didn't get to finish her word. A fluttering sound came from over their heads repeatedly.

"Something is up there." The blonde took out his wand and the other two followed suit.

"Do you think it's glumbumbles?" Morgan voiced his question in a hopeful tone.

"I wouldn't count on that if I were you." Rose replied dejectedly. "They don't live on trees."

With that having being cleared up all three of them looked again upwards, fear not missing from their eyes.

"Let's not panic. It can't be that bad." She said without taking her eyes from the tree leaves that still fluttered.

"Shut up Potter." Malfoy hissed.

"Do you think-"

"I said shut up." He said with more force.

"I think-" This time she stopped without having someone to tell her off, since a swarm of biting fairies, or doxies, flied out of the tree and right towards them. She closed her eyes and prepared for a very painful experience.

Seconds later she realized what she was expecting would not come.

"It's okay." A strangely energetic Morgan said.

Upon opening her eyes she came across something she had only heard of but never seen.

"A full protection charm?" To her defense the Ice Prince sounded just as surprised as she was feeling at the time.

Around them there was an almost transparent veil that trembled every time one of the dozens of doxies tried to attack them but never actually fell apart. It was a Protego spell, but instead of making a wall in front of them it covered and protected every side.

The kind of spell that only a few people could produce.

"Morgan, that's really awesome!" She squeaked in a girly way without realizing it.

"Protection spells are my specialty." Morgan turned a deep shade of red and almost ruined his spell thanks to his embarrassment.

"Should we move?" A less enthusiastic Malfoy cut them off.

"Oh, yes right!" Agreed Morgan. "I don't think I can hold them back for much longer." And indeed, he was sweating and looked quite strained all of a sudden.

After they were out of harm's way the Protego spell fell apart and Morgan fell to his knees.

To Rose who had rushed to help he said he just needed a moment to catch his breath.

"Just let him be Potter." The blonde murmured gloomily.

"What now?" She asked. "Should I take a look around see if there anything?"

"You mean let you go off on your own? I don't think…" Malfoy did not like the idea and didn't hesitate to show his feelings.

Maybe it was because Rose was a little bit too sure of herself, maybe because she was sick of listening to Malfoy bossing her around. Either way she stormed off into the woods without caring much.

She walked around for a while when something pretty good happened to her. Right next to a tree root a small team of glumbumbles was eating from a little bush. She thanked Merlin for her good luck and slowly approached, making sure to be quiet that time. The small insects noticed her a little too fast and she didn't manage to catch too many but all in all the mission was successful.

In ten minutes' time she was holding four glumbumbles which fidgeted and tried to bite her with their small mouths. She contemplated killing them but decided against it. There was always a chance their fluids might be lost if they died. Instead she took out a small pouch and after putting them in placed it in the lower pocket of her jacket. It tickled her awfully when the insects moved but she gritted her teeth and started walking back.

As it turned out she was wrong to worry about finding her way back. Somehow Malfoy and Morgan had made that task pretty easy for her, whether they planned it or not. Possibly the latter.

Sparks were flying in the air and a terribly distracting sound of large rocks falling on the ground or an army passing by or…

Rose began running faster.

When she reached the other two her worst suspicions were proven correct.

"What happened?" She screamed at Malfoy who was firing spells left and right like crazy.

"Trolls." Morgan, lying on the ground, half conscious explained simply.

"I guessed as much. I mean how could you attract trolls here when we barely escaped the doxies?" She took out her wand and fired a curse saving Malfoy from a deadly blow.

"Can you focus on the problem for a second Potter?" The blonde prick was bossing her again but she decided to let it go since the situation was far from ideal for a quarrel.

She counted three trolls, which meant that there were part of a community and the rest would be coming soon. She picked up Morgan and helped him lean against a tree. Then casting a protection spell for herself she run to Malfoy.

The blonde was working diligently. His aim was excellent and usually hit the trolls' faces. That stalled the one enough for him to attack the other.

"We can't kill them." Rose had probably chosen a bad moment to bring that up, but seeing as Malfoy looked pretty pissed at the trolls it could not be kept for later.

He turned to look at her for a mere second, disbelief written all over his face. Rose marveled at how his emotions showed when he was in the middle of a crisis. "Why?" He shouted.

"They're a protected species." She shouted back and heard him mutter something that sounded a lot like 'bloody hell' under his breath.

"I don't give a shit! Their protected species is about to make porridge out of my brains, I'm killing them!" He made one of the enraged troll fall to the ground while he spoke.

Rose swallowed back a chuckle and repeated, "Protected species Malfoy! There are laws…" She too, fired some more curses their way.

"Look, I have to take Morgan back to the Headquarters." She said taking a quick look at the poor guy who was completely unconscious by then.

"Ok, go." He nodded without looking her way and true to her words she lifted the brown-haired boy with a spell and run as fast as she could to where her portkey was.

Thankfully it was where she remembered and in a second she and Morgan were back to the warm and well-lit practice room.

There was no other team back yet, only Burrow, who was still restrained by a couple of Aurors and Alderton.

'Mature hotness' stared at her with a mix of surprise and worry.

"The-there…" She struggled to catch her breath. "There were trolls. I don't know how…" She coughed loudly.

"Morgan was using a full protection spell and he passed out but Malfoy is still out there." She looked anxiously at the Alderton. "He's there and there are trolls… You have to send someone!"

He seemed to understand little by little what she was saying but didn't look too sure as to what to do. He sent an exasperated glance at Burrow who, at his current state was of no help.

"Well, I have to contact a Head Auror and ask for permission…" He trailed off as he ealized how time-consuming that would be.

"I can't leave, I have to be here to make sure the others come back. Maybe we can contact the Aurors that were sent to supervise… I bet someone is taking care of it alrea-" He realized, a little too late perhaps, that no one was listening to him.

Rose had gone back.

**A/N: Kind of a cliffie but the next update is coming soon, so no worries!**

**Thanks for sticking with me for so long!**

**Reviews are immensely appreciated. **

**Be safe,**

**Sarah**


	10. Visual plan

**A/N: Hello! **

**I've been out for a while but I will finish this story no matter what! **

**Please give it a try!**

**Bromance alert by the way…**

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 10: Planning to see**

Rose was back at the forest, cursing Malfoy and her bad luck for having been stuck at the same team with him.

Yet she was back.

Again she was led to him by the noise and spells flying around. Thankfully he was still standing. He had a newly acquired scratch on his cheek, his hair was wet and his clothes torn apart at places but other than that in perfect condition.

"I see your brains are still intact." She commented before joining in the fight.

"No way." He shouted and she would swear he sounded almost amused.

"Shut up." She muttered.

"This doesn't make me a damsel in distress. You came on your own." He cleared up.

"Shut up!" She repeated not without a smile playing on her lips.

"We can't," he paused to duck and avoid a big, hairy hand, "beat them on our own, especially if we don't strike to kill."

She scanned her whereabouts quickly.

"I have an idea." She finally said. "You keep them busy."

Malfoy obliged.

While he was trying to avoid the trolls Rose had cut off the roots from a few trees nearby.

"Malfoy when I say run, you run." She said and then almost instantly. "Now, run!"

The blonde seemed to have barely registered the order but with a few second delay he backed up and started running in the direction of the portkey.

Meanwhile Rose pushed the cut off trees right in front of the outraged trolls. She moved around practically throwing trees at them when she saw the Ice Prince, whom she had clearly freed from his post mimicking her moves.

As she moved to the left she had a chance to see her work with her own eyes. Trolls struggling to free themselves from the branches and trunks and making things even worse in the process. She laughed heartily.

"Your idea of animal protection is quite interesting." A drawling voice said from behind her.

"No need to thank me, Malfoy." She laughed some more, satisfied with herself.

"I'm not." He said effortlessly. "You owed me one."

"Judging from that smirk you've got plastered on your face all day long the whole world must owe you one." She joked but he didn't even bother looking her way. He just stared ahead at the mess they'd created and sighed.

"It's because I like it." He breathed out in a way that seemed almost aimless.

"What? Smirking?"

"No! Being an Auror." He sighed again. "You kept asking annoyingly for an explanation but I don't have one. I just like it. The excitement… and the satisfaction of doing something good, I thought I'd try it out. And turns out I like it. That's why I'm here. And I'm not giving up either. So stop asking me." He avoided her eyes and turned away. If he started talking there really was no way to stop him, Rose thought and smiled to herself.

Then she heard those heavy steps again.

"Crap!" She cursed. "More are coming."

That, apparently, was enough for Malfoy to stop pouring his heart out and start running as they should have been doing long ago.

"We won't make it to the portkey. Let's hide." She suggested as the ground began trembling under her feet.

The spot she had found was a good one, altogether, just not quite comfortable. Ok, maybe not comfortable at all…

It looked ok for her alone, but with Malfoy there it became a little hard to fit inside a hollow trunk, regardless of how big said trunk was.

Both his and her one shoulder could not get in and they had to keep their hands over their heads to manage and get in there. They were stuck so close that she could feel not only his breath but the majority of his body parts as well. The fact that they were both sweating like crazy didn't help one bit.

"Nice spot." He commented dryly and tried to move his chin from her ear. She flinched instinctively as it dawned on her that there was in fact one thing more awkward that a girl and a guy stuck in a small place and that was a guy and a girl dressed as a guy stuck in a small place.

If close contact made Rose in her original appearance blush the worse Malfoy could do would be laugh at her expense. However if the person Scorpius thought was a guy blushed and fretted because of him then she would have a lot more explaining to do…

"Potter." Malfoy said slowly, causing her to look up and almost bump her head with his.

"Yes?" She said holding her breath.

"There's something moving… down there." She followed his glance which rested on his nether regions. And thus the plan to not blush failed.

After the first, few seconds that her head was plagued by horror only, her mind started working again.

"Oh! The Glumbumbles!" She almost screamed at his face.

As expected he didn't understand.

"I caught some while I was away." She explained with more ease now.

"You did? Why didn't you say a thing?" Malfoy kept looking down there with a sense of wonder that'd make anyone misunderstand them.

"Oh, sorry I didn't stop to show you the glumbumbles while we were being chased by trolls." Sarcasm made her relax a little.

"Point taken." He agreed.

"So…" He tried to free his hand that was scrambled behind her head. "Are they big?"

Rose gave him an incredulous look. He was looking down at her cousin's –ehem- you know what and asking whether they were big. The joke was a little too much for her to handle.

And he just stood there, like a person who'd lived his entire life under a rock, not understanding her embarrassment.

"Stop staring at my crotch and asking weird stuff, man." She forced herself to feign indifference and annoyance.

He glared and looked away in an instant. "You're the weirdo, imagining things." He countered not without a hint of shame.

"Ok, fine. Whatever you say. Now, let's get out of here and go back before the time's up." Rose muttered and tried to get out of their hiding place.

He had the same idea apparently, because they both launched forward and got even more tangled up, made an unearthly sound and fell head first on the ground.

"Ouch!" She massaged her hurt arm. He cursed and rubbed his back.

"Let's just go to the portkey. I hate this forest." He stood up cautiously.

They both ran their feet barely touching the trembling ground while the trolls followed them in an angry fit. Rose, or rather Albus, got hold of an old book thrown carelessly next to an old oak tree and at the same time grabbed Malfoy by the collar.

Within seconds they were back to Headquarters.

The first thing they saw was a worried and worn out Morgan being forced down by Alderton. The second was McFusty and his team manifesting their smashed and turned into a jelly glumbumbles as if they were the Goblet of fire.

Maybe it was the disgusting sight or the fact that they had finished second; either way Rose's face made a scary grimace. On the other hand Malfoy who was lying motionless on the floor next to her was trying hard to contain his laughter.

If anyone happened to enter their dorm that night would have been turned into stone by surprise. Because the same guy who had been nicknamed by his class as 'Ice Prince' was in fact laughing his heart out.

"D-did you see his face? Parading his jellified bugs like they were diamonds. Pffft…" he started laughing again. "I dropped a forest on bloody mountain trolls and he was demonstrating his bug collection to me!"

Morgan joined in soon enough, having regained his energy rather fast after being praised by everyone for his full-protection spell.

Rose stared at them both from her bed and sniggered.

"It was my idea, man…" She bickered amicably.

"Never said it wasn't. But the truth is we wreaked havoc out there." Rose nodded unable to move an inch from her spot.

"I preferred you when you were a bitchy loner Malfoy." A chuckle came out of her mouth as she saw him scoffing in disbelief. And he was most probably right. Whatever she might say, Rose felt rather relieved at the unpredictable turn the 'Malfoy issue' had taken recently.

This adventurous, outspoken blonde with the steely and strangely warm laugh was not half bad, a definite improvement to the old, insufferable and sulky version.

Somehow, now her theory about beating Malfoy at any cost was starting to fade in the background.

She sneaked out for a moment, despite being exhausted, to check up on Albus.

She took out the communication mirror and called his name.

"Oi!" He greeted with a half-annoyed, half-content expression. "Why haven't you contacted me for so long? I wanted to call you out but I was afraid someone else might hear me."

She nodded apologetically. "Sorry, Al. It's just that a lot happened lately."

"Update me." He encouraged and Rose hurried to oblige, letting him know about the hexing accident Malfoy had gotten blamed for and the forest adventures .

"No way!" His jaw was on the floor and he kept shaking his head in denial.

"You went to St. Mungus? And you kicked some serious troll arse! Are you ok? You're not kidding me right?" He blabbered excitedly.

"It would be a bit hard to come up with such a story." She argued and her cousin had to agree.

"Besides, the reason I wanted to talk to you was because I need some pep talk." Rose changed the subject.

"About what?" He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Please remind me why I should hate Malfoy." She blurted out hurriedly her green eyes looking everywhere except for Albus.

"Actually, there is no reason to-"

"No!" She interrupted him. "That's not what I wanted to hear. Just remind me all those reasons I've been reciting to you all this time."

Her rather perceptive cousin looked at her more closely.

"Why don't you just tell me what the real problem is?" He crossed his hands and spoke like one would speak to a little kid.

Rose messed her black and already quite messy hair, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. She cleared her throat but nothing came out.

After a few failed attempts to pour her heart out to her cousin she finally made some progress.

"Well… is it possible," She began slowly, "that I have been coming face to face with Malfoy for all this time and yet…" She lost her courage for a moment.

"And yet, I have not been seeing him at all?" She finished awkwardly.

Albus smiled knowingly.

"Maybe you didn't want to see." He put forward and she glared at him.

"That's a ridiculous idea! Is there a person on this earth who wants to be unaware of things? Do you think I knew Malfoy could be decent and chose to think of him as a jerk and get into fights with him?" Words slipped her mouth quickly as she felt her blood pressure rising.

"That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that to understand someone you must invest in them even a little bit." He tried to explain and earned an even more confused look from his cousin.

"I mean, you have been looking at Malfoy too casually up till now. You had an idea of what he was and never bothered to pay more attention to him until he had you falling to the ground. Quite literally." He smirked at his little joke and Rose pouted at the same time.

She obviously could not handle so much truth, so she decided to drop the issue. The next half hour was spent listening to Albus' incessant blabber about his muggle girlfriend and how amazing she was.

As she walked back to the dorm Rose felt somewhat calmer and ready to go to bed only to open the door and come up with two lively and excited teammates, planning what didn't sound like a good night's sleep.

"Scorpius is banned from going out this weekend so we're going to steal some firewhiskey and get hammered tonight!" Morgan announced their mastermind plan.

"Do you even know how many kinds of wrong this is?" She shrieked.

"Calm down Potter, we used to do it often in the Slytherin dorms, remember?" In fact Rose did not remember, probably because she'd never been in the Slytherin dorms and she could not believe that the stuck up, coward Malfoy used to get drunk against the rules. Then again according to her cousin James everything can happen in the Slytherin dorms.

She shook her head to get back on track.

"I remember." She lied. "But that's not the same. This is serious. We could get kicked out."

"Relax Al! Most people have left for the weekend." Morgan tried to assure her.

"And how exactly are you going to find the firewhiskey?" She sat heavy on her bed, her eyes roaming from one to the other.

"Well, since you're in the best condition out of the three of us, Morgan thought you could grab a broom and sneak out the window…" Malfoy smirked, either because of the Slytherin-ness of the plan or because she'd be the one to do all the dirty work.

"I-I…" She stammered at the new problem.

Grab a broom… and fly…

That was something she couldn't do even if she did not object to the plan.

Rose had forgotten why she had to pretend to be her cousin to get into Auror training. All this time she was so engrossed in what was happening that she hadn't paid any attention to the real problem; which was that she could not, for the love of Merlin, fly on a broom.

Even at the sight of Morgan's broom she felt cold sweat running down her forehead.

"I can't…" She bit her lower lip. "No. I won't. That's against the rules. I will not participate."

Morgan gave her a serious look. "Is your injury not healed yet?" He asked solemnly.

She was ready to agree with Morgan, glad that he had provided a perfect excuse for her when Malfoy intervened.

"That's impossible." He said. "I was there when you got injured, that sort of wound should have healed in less than a month." He blurted out without giving it much thought.

He was right too. However, at that time he was giving Rose a real headache.

"And how would you know? Are you a Healer now?" She tried to defend herself.

The brown-haired friend of hers smiled a small smile and patted her back.

"Let's not fight." He said calmly. "I'm in perfect shape since I've been resting for three hours. I'll go get the drinks."

And with that he grabbed the broom and jumped out of the window.

Malfoy who thankfully had not been ticked off by her provocative tone continued to stare at her, or in fact her cousin Albus, for a while.

His gray eyes were brighter, not with joy but with interest. Something like an idea was burning inside of them.

"I see..." The blonde finally spoke.

"You've been acting weird all this time and now I see why." He declared.

**A/N: Ok, ok, what do you think?**

**Since you bothered to read now you need to review to tell me what you think?**

**Sorry for the little cliffie.**

**Kisses, **

**Sarah**


	11. Malfoy plans

**A/N: So, I really appreciate your patience with this story!**

**I don't think I could finish it without you readers backing me up.**

**I'd like to dedicate this chapter to ****littlesquirrel****, whose review really made me sound like a pretty cool writer -that unfortunately I am not. **

**Thanks a lot and it'd be nice if you logged in the next time you reviewed so I could thank message you!**

**Also, a HUGE kiss to everyone who's followed through this story so far and even went as far as re-reading the whole thing (you know who I'm talking about…)! **

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 11: Malfoy plans**

Within seconds, around a dozen ways in which Malfoy's comment could ruin her life, crossed Rose's mind. He could tell Burrow or he could blackmail her or tell her father or…

She was so busy fussing over his words that she almost missed the next thing he said.

"Wha-what did you just say?" Terror was audible in her voice and she was sure Malfoy could hear it too.

"I said I know why you're acting so strange lately." As he spoke she felt her whole body freezing over. She felt she was done with. She didn't even have the courage to think of an excuse.

"You're afraid to fly." The blond explained boldly and Rose barely heard him over her heart beating in her ears.

"What?" She mumbled unable to believe that she had in fact come so close to be exposed (at least in her own mind) and escaped.

"That accident you had three months ago was not serious. I remember because one of our house elves was down with spattergroit and I was at St. Mungo's that day. I saw you and since I was curious I asked a friend of my father's who's a Healer. He said you'd be ok after three of four weeks." He shrugged like it was no big deal while Rose struggled to get a hold of herself.

"You have nothing to say?" He turned and looked at her with a smirk fighting to sneak out of his lips.

"Ok, then. I'll just keep talking…" He nodded to himself.

"The injury was not something to worry about, but since we started the training here, you haven't been to the flying field once. And tonight you refused to go fetch the drinks. So, I'm guessing there's some reason you cannot ride a broom and that's not the injury." He paused expecting the black haired guy to give him an answer, but got none.

So he stood up and walked to her, like a tiger approaching his prey.

"What's your problem? You once told me you have a damn good reason to be here and that nothing could pull you off your course. And you said that if I want to be an Auror I had to start trusting people. So I'm throwing these words right back at you."

They were once again facing each other, like they had done before when they fought, only in that case it was not an argument. Malfoy was driving her into a corner and she had nothing to say in order to contradict her own words.

"You will never hear me admit it to anyone ever again, but I trust you, Potter. We've never been friends in the past but now… I think I trust you. You're a real headache yet you can be decent if you want to and I thought 'what the hell, I'll give this partnership thing a shot.' So you have to tell me what the problem is. Cause that's the only way I can help." He finished and his gray eyes were so serious and honest and his face so close to her that Rose had to look away.

Her face was hardening and her hands were going numb. The more he stared at her and the more he acted like… not a jerk, the more she felt like screaming, or crying, or both.

She cursed herself for wanting a good relationship with Malfoy. How could she ever wish to be friends with him when that would mean lying to a friend and on top of that betraying her team?

She should have just ignored and hated him; she should never have seen that side of him. That soothing way his eyelids lowered over his gray eyes and his head tilted to the left a bit when he said that he trusted her… She should have never seen it.

Because suddenly she was losing the game.

"What if I can't tell you?" She whispered knowing that a tall, strong guy like her cousin wasn't supposed to whisper like that.

"I haven't Silencio-ed you. You can tell me." He replied almost jokingly.

"You know that's not what I mean…" Rose trailed off, messing her black hair awkwardly. "If I say it you might want to run to Burrow or Alderton and tell them everything."

"I won't." His voice felt like a blade cutting thin air.

"Not long ago you got into trouble because of me… It'd be understandable if-" She saw him gritting his teeth and stopped.

"It _would _be understandable." He agreed coldly. "But I won't."

At her inquisitive look he was forced to explain.

"You saw what we did out there… The three of us…we're good at this. And you came back to save me. I'm not stupid; I know how to tell the decent people apart. I won't betray you."

"I don't think you'll feel the same after you hear the whole truth. I mean… if I were you I could never accept-" She shook her head in denial.

"Well, good thing then that I'm not you." He flashed an angry look at her.

Rose's insides were starting to ache and she had to stop him.

"You can't help me even if I told you what's wrong." She mumbled in the same weak tone.

"That's not for you to decide." The blond retorted. "I'm really not as powerless as you think!" He protested, because, obviously, the wound from being repeatedly called a 'damsel in distress' was still a little sore.

"Yes, I know." She nodded in agreement and saw his body relax in front of her.

She wanted to relax as well. To tell the truth, have Malfoy yell her ears out and then, if he was still willing to help, hear him out. Maybe he could come up with a way to let her be an Auror using her own name.

_But then what about Al?_ A little voice whispered in her head. Could she just abandon him so easily? He was happy and if the truth was revealed he would be held accountable as well.

She thought of her cousin's idiotic face as he spoke about his girlfriend and his carefree life.

Perhaps this plan was bad. Perhaps they were both awful people for deceiving everyone. However, Albus was her cousin and despite his carelessness he was a good guy.

Rose knew she couldn't let him down.

"I can't fly. No. What I mean is I'm too scared to fly." She muttered in the end. And it was the truth, just not the truth she should be telling.

"But back in Hogwarts you had no problem…" Malfoy protested.

"Three months ago, I was taking my cousin Rose's brother for a ride over our house." She decided to be as truthful as possible, because that story really was part of her memories.

"And even though I could fly easily, suddenly I lost my focus. I could not control the broom and it made a dive. I tried to turn it back up but it was too late." She recounted the story from her own childhood, trying to make it sound as something Albus would have said.

"I injured my knee but my cousin Hugo got hurt seriously. I-I… cannot get that moment out of my head… Him lying there in a pool of blood." She tried not to sound too weak, for the sake of her cousin's pride.

"Is he ok?" The guy in front of her didn't seem to care a lot for appearances as he grabbed her shoulder and gave her a worried look.

"Yes… yes… He's just fine. It's been so long since then anyway." She blabbered before managing to catch herself. She stopped to check his expression and make sure he had not suspected that the accident she was talking about had actually happened ten years ago.

Indeed he didn't seem to pay any special attention to her words.

He was just so engrossed with thinking about the problem that didn't speak for at least ten minutes.

"Then you should just take it slowly. At first you can just fly low and… well, I can help you practice." Apparently, that last part had come out spontaneously because Malfoy bit his lip and took a step back as soon as he realized his boldness.

"I've tried to get over it but nothing worked so far." She added hesitantly.

"You haven't practiced with me. I mean, I'm an Auror and my last name's Malfoy, I can do pretty much anything." He laughed and sighed at the same time.

"Man, you've got it bad… You'll definitely regret this." She said and even though she wanted to be serious about she couldn't.

"Who'll regret this?" A red face popped from the window and slowly Morgan got off his broom and jumped into the dorm, the smuggled drinks clinging from inside his travelling cloak.

"No one will." Malfoy muttered hurriedly and checked outside the window for eyewitnesses. Nobody was there.

"Okay! Firewhiskey time!" The brown-haired guy opened his cloak to reveal the three yet intact bottles. He handed one to each of his partners and kept the last for himself.

"Why are we even celebrating? We didn't come back first." Rose tried once again to throw some sense into the team.

"But we got attacked by doxies and trolls." Malfoy started drinking as he spoke.

"And we survived." Morgan added taking a sip of his drink as well.

"Not to mention that we brought back some glumbumbles for Burrow and passed the test." The blond continued on cue.

"By the way how did you catch them Al?" She stared at the two guys who had already fallen back on their beds and sighed.

Taking the bottle and opening it she tried to get comfortable in her bed as well.

"I didn't do anything special, if that's what you mean." She felt the hot drink warming her up. "I was just walking away because Malfoy was being annoying when suddenly I saw them there…"

"Wow, thanks Potter." Malfoy said in a careless tone that showed he didn't really mind.

"You're welcome." She joked back and heard Morgan chuckle.

"I'm kind of envious that I couldn't stay till the end." He put in with a wistful tone.

"It wasn't really all that great. Potter kept talking about animal rights and protected species while I was trying to not get killed." Malfoy's drawling voice made her scoff.

"And whose idea was it to cut off the trees in order to stall the trolls? That's right. Mine." She bit back, feeling a lot happier as the contents of the bottle lessened.

"Yeah, you also had us hiding inside a trunk. That was bloody brilliant." He must had been smirking, thought Rose.

"A trunk? Seriously?" Morgan raised his head from the bed to look at her in disbelief.

"Not my best idea, I'll admit, but to be fair, Ice Prince over there had much more trouble with psychical contact than me." She knew this wasn't true but decided to put the blame on him and act cool.

Malfoy almost choked on his drink.

He tried to protest at the obvious attack on his good name –as he explained later- but had to stop as his face was going red and the firewhiskey was burning its way down his throat.

"And what about you? A full-protection charm? That was awesome. I had no idea you could do something like that." She swiftly changed the subject.

This time Morgan sat up on his mattress and gave her an once-over. He seemed to be thinking hard about something until his characteristics relaxed and he turned back on his drink.

"Well, I'm just good at it." The brown-haired guy shrugged. "Back in Hogwarts I even tutored younger students on protection charms."

Rose nodded in understanding.

"Honestly, I was _sure_ we'd flunk this mission." She commented with a small smile sneaking up on her face.

"_I_ thought we'd flank _every _mission." Malfoy said.

"_I _was sure you'd have killed each other before we even started missions." Morgan teased and this time they all laughed.

"I know right? Malfoy is _such _a prick!" Rose exclaimed in a fake pained expression.

"I was just minding my own business-" He began defiantly.

"You hit me with a curse!" She whined.

"It was a bloody accident!" He repeated his former claim.

"You saw me. I called your name…" She pushed it.

"Yeah and you surprised me! I was focused on practice." He insisted arrogantly.

"Ha! Are you bragging about your fighting skills right now?" Rose raised an eyebrow.

They kept bickering heatedly for a while about nothing important until they realized that the third member of their team looked rather peculiar.

"Guuuys… you –hick- sound like an –hick- old married couple." Morgan's blurry voice made them stop.

"He sounds drunk." The blond whispered to her.

"Hammered's more like it. And we didn't even drink all that much…" She added in the same low tone.

"Guuuuys… are you –hick- keeping se-hick-crets from me?" Morgan pouted without even bothering to stand up.

"Maybe we should take that bottle from him now." Rose suggested and as she spoke, motioned to an unwilling blond to help her.

"Come on, he's stronger than he looks." She cried over the brown-haired guy's protests to leave his 'baby' alone.

"I'm not good with drunken people." Malfoy tried diplomatically, but in the end he complied at her glare.

"What are you guys doing –hick- now? Trying to –hick- hug me?" With a swift move, unlike those of an intoxicated person, Morgan lunched forward and grabbed the back of both their necks. He pulled them down with him and stood there triumphantly keeping them in a tight hug that looked more like a tackle.

"Happy now, Potter?" The blond hissed as he tried to free himself.

"Just wait till he falls asleep. We can escape his gorilla hug then." She reasoned.

"Well, this is awkward." She heard Malfoy mutter from Morgan's right as she fought to free the hand with which she held her firewhiskey.

"That's for mocking my amazing hiding place." She smirked.

"Yes, I'm so sorry. It was great. Let's hide there again sometime. Let's get glued to each other in that dirty, disgusting place for hours next time!" His loud, sarcastic voice made their half-asleep friend stir a bit.

"Are you hitting on me Malfoy?" She could barely hold her laugh back to not wake up Morgan.

"You're lucky I'm trapped Potter. Otherwise you'd be dead by now." He said in a deadly tone.

"You're fun Malfoy." She retorted, now smiling more kindly.

"One would expect you to have realized that after seven years in Hogwarts." The blond relaxed as well.

"But I missed it, what can you do? I guess after getting drunk with smuggled firewhiskey in the Auror Headquarters, you start seeing people in a different light." She was planning to laugh it off like it was only a joke.

Instead she found herself holding her breath, as if she had blurted out some big secret, and to her great surprise so did Malfoy. She didn't attempt to look at him to confirm her suspicions. Because, the truth was -and she knew it by then- that the more she got to understand him, the less she could hide behind her cousin's black hair and playful green eyes. As she noticed him, he was starting to notice her too.

**A/N: In case you didn't notice pretty reviews make me write faster!**

**The romance is finally here so tell me what you think of it!**

**Kisses,**

**Sarah**


End file.
